Sense of danger
by nyte-nurs
Summary: Post- episode for Sense Memory, set in the same reality/universe as unlucky 13, rated M for content in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Post-ep for Sense memory. Set in the same H/P love-in universe as my previous post-ep "Unlucky thirteen".

This is not complete as I'm going to diverge from CM here and add more chapters.

**I own nothing, no infringement intended no profits made. **

Slamming her apartment door behind her she knew she wouldn't be coming back here until this was over. Maybe not even then. Whatever she told herself about records being locked away, confidential, destroyed even she knew Doyle had traced her. He would play with her, leave her for last and then come for her. She toyed with calling Sean, but really doubted her could help her. She knew really what she needed to do, safeguard the people she cared about, she'd done everything she could to avoid hurting them, but she knew she would have to hurt them to keep them out of this.

She swallowed back a shaky breath as she knocked on Hotch's office door. She was glad he was here late and not home, she didn't want to risk Doyle linking them, she hadn't been to his place sine she'd met with Sean.

He looked surprised when she slipped in and closed the door behind her, and raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Hey." he said hesitantly. He was astute enough to know that she had been off the last week or so, she knew he hoped he was about to find out why.

"Hey," she echoed as she slipped into the seat opposite him, "I'm sorry to come here late but I needed to talk to you."

He sat back from the desk, giving her his full attention and encouragement to continue.

"I've been feeling... overwhelmed, and I know it's really not what you want to hear but I need some time to decide if this is really what I want."

He chewed his lip for a second, she watched his body tense, "You're running."

She braced herself, she was going to have to make this convincing, to make sure he stayed away, "So what if I am? I'm the one who'll get transferred, you get a notch on your bed post and I get labelled as the one who sleeps her way into a unit." she let her voice rise slightly.

"You haven't been worried about our positions here before." he replied

"Maybe I have and I just didn't want you to know." she countered.

"What about everything we planned? What about Jack? I let him get to know you, to love you."

"I don't think I'm ready for an instant family, its too much. It's too many changes too fast, I feel like I've got two lives running at once and you're asking me to choose. Well my job was my life before I ever met you, and yours has always been your top priority, I can't be some barefoot and pregnant housewife Hotch, not even for you." her own words pained her, because actually it was everything she wanted and she could be, especially for him and Jack.

Hotch stood open mouthed as if she had slapped him, she knew she had hit a sore point, his commitment to his job having ended his marriage.

"Why now?" he asked, "I don't understand this." he shook his head.

"Why should I have to make you understand this? All you need to know is that we need to be professional, I don't want anything else from you."

He bowed his head, "Fine." he whispered, "Obviously theres nothing I can say."

It took every ounce of will power she had to stand and not throw herself at him and apologise, "I have some vacation days, I'll take a couple, give us a chance to cool down." she said quietly

"Fine." he repeated expressionlessly.

She closed the door behind and fought a loosing battle with tears as she headed back to the parking garage. She took a few deep breaths to clear her vision before pulling out a little too fast. That had been one of the hardest things she ever had to do but she knew she had to do it for his safety and to prevent putting Jack at risk. She would bare whatever consequences came her way from either her past or current actions, she had spent the better part of her life cutting things up into neat little sections, this belonged with that, etc, and she saw now she had accomplished very little. She had let her less settled teenaged years leak into her professional life by seeking out a role where she could legitimately take risks, be someone else, have a different life, and do it under the pretence of bringing someone to justice. Sure she had done that, but at what cost to herself? She'd embraced her new history when she started in the BAU, but closed her whole life off to the team she trusted and valued so highly. She'd shied away from relationships afraid to get involved and give too much away and then ironically fell for a man who valued trust above all else when one of their first conversations was laced with lies. Her work history of inexperience in the field, vague locations, he had never questioned why in all her time with the BAU she had not mentioned a single previous case, something that other agents do on a daily basis. In their personal life he had never pushed her for information, taking only what she gave and accepting her on face value. Maybe she had been lying about herself so long she couldn't remember what the truth was. Some things she was certain of, she regretted having to walk away and she loved him, and once this was all over she would damn security clearance and tell him what had been going on and why she said such awful things to hurt him. She supposed he would either forgive her or not, but right now safeguarding him and Jack mattered more than not hurting him. Having seen what he went through with Foyet she couldn't even consider giving him the option of putting Jack at risk in anyway.

As she slipped through the door of her hotel room she held it open to allow the light to shine in until she located the light switch. She did a cursory survey of the room but her heart wasn't really in it. The constant hyper vigilance was exhausting, draining, she knew that was Doyle's intention, to leave her long enough to wear herself out. Eventually she'd be sleep deprived, strung out and stressed enough to make a stupid mistake and he would be waiting. Her best hope was that his tempestuous and impatient nature would get the better of him and he wouldn't be able to wait that long.

She threw her bag down and slumped onto the bed with a deep sigh. Reluctantly she pulled her overnight bag off the floor onto the bed beside her and rooted around for the small paper bag which held her afternoon purchase. After a deep breath she slid the rectangular box from the bag and fingered the plastic wrapping suspiciously. Eventually deciding she had better just get on with it she tore off the plastic and pulled open the box the read instructions she didn't need. She knew how to pee on a stick. What she didn't know was quite what to do afterward. They were supposed to share this moment, it was theirs, taking a pregnancy test like this made her feel like a stupid teenager all over again. She desperately wanted him to be here, to share the wait, the anticipation, the fear and excitement. But she couldn't let him know right now. She could only hold onto the faint hope he wouldn't hate her for keeping this from him, if indeed there was a 'this' to keep from him.

She paced with the stick in her hand, ignoring the instruction to leave it on a flat surface. Why was three minutes such a long time? Why was this happening now?

As the timer alert on her phone sounded she grasped it up and silenced it. Uncovering the result window she wasn't surprised to see the word "PREGNANT" displayed there.

Unable do anything else she laughed out loud alone in her hotel room and lifted up a silent prayer that she would have a chance to give Hotch the news about their baby some way apart from as a footnote on her autopsy report after Doyle had finished with her.


	2. Chapter 2

Haven't decided whether to post up an Emily POV or team POV next. I'll write both & decide which to post later, if you're leaving a review please feel free to request one or the other.

**No infringement intended, I own nothing & make no profit.**

A sense of danger -chapter 2- a bad day indeed.

Prentiss tried to resist the urge to rub her forehead and squeeze her eyes shut as Hotch spoke. He was pissed enough at her as it was but as his voice rose a little in volume the pain above her eyes multiplied to an intensity that made her vision swim and she pressed her eyes closed in an attempt to stop herself vomiting from the vertigo it induced.

"Emily?" a hushed voice said to her right, Reid she knew. She peered painfully at him through her hair, "Are you OK?"

As she looked up further she could see all eyes on her, except Hotch's, studying her intently and she felt her skin prickle from the unwanted attention.

She cleared her throat and tried to sound normal, whatever that was, "Just a headache." she mumbled.

"That," Rossi's voice boomed making her wince, "is not just a headache, it looks like a pretty impressive migraine to me."

Morgan chimed in, "You should go take some meds and sleep it off, you can't work if you can't see straight."

"You're no good here if you can't contribute," came Hotch's terse reply, "Go back to the hotel." he didn't throw even a cursory glance her way. She didn't blame him. She nodded her agreement and rose wordlessly to leave. Reid placed a gentle hand on her arm.

"I'll drive her back, she shouldn't drive like this." he said quietly but firmly.

Hotch met his eye and quickly glanced across at her, "Fine, straight back here though."

Reid didn't respond, simply placed a hand at Emily's back and guided her out of the room under the watchful stares of their co-workers.

Once in the passenger seat of the car Emily cracked the window a little and rested her head on the window with a hand covering her eyes.

"Thanks Reid." she croaked as he turned the ignition.

Reaching across to the glove box he pulled out a small box, "Here, these are good for migraines, pain relief and anti-nausea."

She made no attempt to reach for the box, "I'm OK thanks."

"You don't look it." he said a little too frankly for her tastes.

She made no reply.

"I've never known you to have a migraine before. You handle most triggers all the time, you drink caffeine, sleep little, eat irregularly, have a stressful job and its the first time you've ever mentioned having a migraine."

"What's your point?"

"Something must have changed." he pulled the car out of the parking space and allowed silence to settle for a few seconds before adding, "Your refusal of meds is not what I would have expected, I thought you would try most things to stay on the case."

She let him ramble on hoping that eventually he would stop or she would pass out.

He cleared his throat, "Early pregnancy is a common trigger for migraines."

Her head snapped up to meet his eyes but his face remained impassive as he drove. "Is that so?"

He nodded, "Theoretically,... In that situation it would be best to stick to clear fluids and try to sleep it off, ensuring that you...er... They didn't get dehydrated."

"I see." was the only reply she could formulate. She could hear her own heart racing as silence descended on them again, damn profilers.

"How many weeks?" he asked gently.

"Six, nearly seven." she didn't bother to insult his intelligence by denying it, though she very much wanted to, "Does anyone else know?"

He shook his head, "I doubt anyone else is as familiar with migraine triggers. And they're all preoccupied with whatever is going on with you and Hotch. I presume this is what's going on."

She shrugged, "He doesn't know I'm pregnant if that's what you mean."

"It wasn't. It's fairly obvious you two have been having a relationship for some time."

That sinking feeling of the various parts of her life she tried to keep separate colliding at top speed returned and she found herself speechless again, she wasn't sure if it was because there was so much going on she couldn't begin to articulate it, or because of the throbbing pain behind her eyes.

"You ended it because you were freaked out about the pregnancy?" he guessed.

"No," she whispered, "the pregnancy was planned."

Reid nodded, "OK, so what's going on?"

She debated how much to tell him, it seemed pointless at this point to outright lie, "I'm in trouble, and I need to sort it out and keep all of you out of it. An old case, I don't want to say anything more about it OK? And please keep that to yourself."

He nodded again, "If you need help you know we all would-"

"Which is exactly why I haven't asked for it. You can't get caught up in this." she told him tersely, then regretted it, the very action of snapping sending pain waves ricocheting around her head. That was her retribution she supposed for snapping at a friend who was trying to help her. She couldn't quite suppress the groan that escaped her lips in response.

Reid remained unoffended, "You could try a cold compress since pain meds are out, might cut the nausea too." he offered.

"Thanks, I don't deserve your help, I'm being a bitch."

"You're in pain, strung out and under pressure, I'd say you're being remarkably polite actually."

She snorted, "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult Reid."

"Just a statement of fact," he paused as he pulled the car to a standstill, "We're here, I'll walk you up. Morgan would kill me if I let you get out and struggle up there alone."

She didn't bother to protest, she didn't have the energy. As she slid from the car she grudgingly accepted a link into his arm, and found him stronger in supporting than she'd imagined as she leaned into him. The world pitched in front of her and she brought a hand up to her face to try to clear her vision as blur and blackness crept in from the edges, she felt Reid shift his grip and manoeuvre her so her back was pressed up against the car and he supported her shoulders.

"it's OK," he told her in a low voice, "you're not going to pass out just take a few deep breaths." he paused, then added, "But if you need to throw up please remember I don't have any spare shoes with me."

She laughed in spite of herself, and this ridiculous situation, Reid was holding her up like a drunken teenager against a car outside their hotel. What on earth anyone passing by would think she didn't want to consider. After a few moments her vision cleared and she nodded to Reid that they could continue.

"I'm sorry, Reid, this ... this is just not me." she murmured, as they progressed slowly toward the entrance.

"Emily it seems like you have a lot of things running parallel in your life that you try to keep from crossing. You had to know that would be impossible to maintain forever, especially as you and Hotch planned this baby. I'm not going to interfere but I really think there's nothing to be gained by trying to handle this on your own, in fact there's an awful lot to loose. You're not working at your best, the rest of the team have valuable skills that could help you, not to mention keeping all these secrets is a huge stress in your body when you least need it." he told her ignoring all her attempts to interrupt, dissuade, or disarm him.

"Are you finished?" she asked as she pulled out the key for her room.

He shrugged, "For now, I guess."

She threw the door open, "Good, cos I have to go throw up and then go sleep."

Reid wrinkled his nose in mild alarm, then called through the closed door, "I'll check on you later."

Emily winced at the bright light of the bathroom and braced herself over the toilet waiting for inevitable retching to start. She wasn't sure she had anything to throw up at all as all she'd got down was water but she was more than familiar with the shaky, heart racing, sweaty feeling of impending doom to know her body would have a dam good try. The pain in her head doubled as her stomach rolled and she wanted to cry like a child. Oh how she wished for the drugged up oblivion her mother had administered her into when she found her suffering from her first pregnancy induced migraine at the age of fifteen. Of course her mother assumed it was a stress headache and dosed her accordingly, as she already had a termination booked it made no difference what she put in her body to numb the pain so she did not refuse and spent the next day in a lovely hazy dose. When she was relatively confident she was done throwing up she flushed the toilet and splashed warm water on her face not caring that her make up had run down her face.

She shuffled out of the bathroom turning off the light and laying down in the half light with her fingers pressed to her forehead. It was only as her body began to relax she became aware of it, breathing in the room that was not her own.

She felt the cold square metal barrel jar into the back of her head before she could react.

"Having a bad day, aren't you Lauren?"


	3. Chapter 3

Sense of danger-the art of conversation.

**I own nothing, no infringement intended no profit made.**

Prentiss was surprised by her lack of shock at Doyle's presence, it seemed almost fitting that he would have the sort of instincts that would allow him to find her at her absolute lowest moment and drag her down.

She heard rather than felt the air leave her lungs as he slammed her against the wall, everything felt oddly disconnected. Her gun was far out of reach, she was pregnant so she wasn't exactly going to choose to go hand to hand with him if she could help it, short of her whole team bursting in she felt fairly sure she was going to loose her life here. The only question that remained for her was what he would do to her first. He had her pinned against the wall with his arm extended just below her neck from shoulder to shoulder, not yet applying pressure to her throat, but leaving her with no doubt that he would and could. His right hand was grasped around a gun which he had shifted to pressing hard into her lower abdomen, his unfailing instincts told him how to gain the maximum control of her whether he knew why or not.

"Too much booze?" he growled close to her face.

"Migraine." she replied off-handedly.

He raised an eyebrow, "You don't get migraines." he countered confidently.

She sighed, it made no difference if he knew, "One of the wonderful side-effects of pregnancy, Ian." she told him.

Instantly she felt him ease the pressure off her noticeably, well that was a surprise, Ian Doyle had a moral guideline to his agenda.

"You're lying." he said tightly.

She snorted, "Actually no, for the first time not at all, what would I gain by telling you I'm pregnant if I weren't?"

"I have rules, you know that."

She shifted uncomfortably and he shoved her backward again in warning, " One of which is you don't kill women, so isn't a rule about pregnant women redundant?"

"Unless they betray me." he said slowly, emphasising each syllable.

"I was never loyal to you in the first place so I didn't betray you Ian. This isn't some high moral crusade you're on, it's about your ego being dented that some woman blind sided you, exploited your narcissistic nature and got you locked up where you belong." she kept her tone even, nothing she said was going to dissuade him from whatever action he had already decided on so she thought she may as well have her say.

"Is that your defence?" he snorted.

"I don't need one, I never murdered anybody, for a start, let's not go into the rest of your resume."

"You should know enough about me to be more afraid than you are."

"Are you trying to bore me to death? All this conversation is not your style." she rolled her eyes to emphasise her point.

He leaned harder with his flat arm, but the pressure from the metal at her abdomen did not increase. "Maybe I'm disappointed you made it so easy, I expected you to put up a better fight."

"Maybe you actually are having moral issues murdering a pregnant woman and you're stalling." she guessed, "Or maybe its no fun if I don't fight back."

He snarled and she knew one of her assumptions was correct, "Maybe I'll just kick that bastard child out of you and I get to watch you suffer for your smart mouth _and_ I don't have any issues at all."

She swallowed hard, "What do you want from me, Ian?" she muttered.

He straightened up and leaned further away from her without releasing any of the pressure against her neck, "I want to hear it from you."

She leaned her head back against the wall in exasperation, "Hear what? I was a plant, under cover, I pretended to be in love with you in order to collect evidence against you. It was my job."

"We shared a bed, isn't that a bit above and beyond?" he shouted.

She rolled her eyes, "Well, hazard pay sucks so I thought I might as well get _something_ out of it."

She heard the impact echo round her skull as he brought the butt of the gun down against her temple, hard, her vision briefly flashed bright white and when it cleared she could see the carpet up close, she had fallen to her knees. She could see Doyle's boots, her blood dripped across them, they faded in and out of focus as she put a tentative hand up to her forehead to assess the damage. She didn't get much of a chance to check it out as Doyle leaned down and hauled her back to her feet. The world spun as he pinned her back against the wall with his hand round her throat, she fought to maintain some sort of equilibrium amid the pitch and roll of her vision but found nothing to steady herself on apart from Doyle himself. She pressed one hand against her bleeding head and the other against the wall at her back as she tried to lessen the pressure from his strangle hold on her.

"Do NOT, talk like that, like it meant NOTHING, like you were just some cheap whore." he roared.

"What do you want from me? Why don't you just get it over with?" she gasped, unable to resist the urge to pull at his grip any longer.

He loosened his grip enough so that she knew he didn't intend to finish her right now, "I'm giving you a chance to tell me yourself, or I will get it out of you." his voice was low, purposeful.

She let her hand drop from her forehead and slipped it behind her back, "Tell you what? I don't know what you're talking about."

"You took the thing I valued most away from me. I intend to make you suffer for that loss."

She glanced around in panic, no one was coming, there was nothing to hand to help her, "Please I've no idea what you mean, even after years locked away you still have funds, men who follow you, I don't understand this."

He pressed his face close to hers, "You think this is about money, or power? How much money would it take for you to kill that baby?"

"What?" she whispered.

"How much money would it have taken for you to _not_ kill my baby?"

Her mouth hung open unable to form a proper response, withdrawing her hand from behind her she pressed it back against the thudding as she tried to formulate a response, she turned her head away from him against the wall as much as she could. She couldn't she was screwed however she looked at it. If she told him he was right he'd kill her, if she told him the truth he'd probably kill her after trying to torture information out of her. "I..uh, ...I didn't do that." she heard the panic in her own voice and tried to regulate her breathing and heart rate.

"Don't lie." he growled at her squeezing harder.

She gasped as her air supply was restricted, pulling herself up taller to try to get some extra capacity out of her lungs, "Please-" she choked out.

Abruptly and unexpectedly Doyle released his grip on her and her legs buckled underneath her, Emily braced herself against the side of the bed as she struggled for breath, she was utterly unprepared for the sharp scratch which then assaulted her upper arm. She spun round to see Doyle re-sheathing and stowing an empty syringe.

"What-" her words slurred and the room started to go dark. Knowing what was coming she sat flat against the bed to prevent herself from falling.

Doyle sat down next to her with a cheery expression, "Midazolam, great stuff, makes you cooperative, quiet, sedate but conscious, and best of all you won't remember a thing you say or do when you come round."

Her last thought as the reality swum out of her grasp was _I know what midazolam is you asshole._


	4. Chapter 4

chapter 4- certainties.

**I own nothing, no infringement intended, no profit made.**

Rossi regarded the remains of the team with barely disguised amusement. Since his return Reid had been like a cat on a hot tin roof, shuffling around, tapping his pen, shuffling papers unable to settle to a task. He could see Hotch growing more and more irritated, their unit chief's already shortened fuse was wearing thin and Rossi was waiting for the fireworks to begin. Morgan was studiously avoiding both Hotch and Reid's eye line while appearing to scope out the nearest exit and lining up an excuse to use it.

When Reid began drumming his fingers on the desk Hotch broke and yelled, "Reid!" all heads snapped up toward him and Reid's mouth hung open, realising he had been sharper than was justified Hotch cleared his throat and spoke again, "Do you have a problem Reid?"

Reid squirmed again, "Sir, I don't know, something's bothering me about leaving Prentiss in the hotel."

At the mention of her name it was evident he either lost interest or pretended to, "She doesn't need a baby-sitter." he muttered.

Reid shook his head and continued in the face of dismissal, "No that's not what I mean, I saw something, that made me feel...uneasy."

Morgan sat forward, ignoring Hotch's eye rolling, "What was it?"

Reid shook his head as if to clear it, "I'm not sure."

Morgan continued to prompt him, "But you remember, you saw it, walk us through."

Reid stared unseeingly into the centre of the table, "We got out the car, she nearly passed out, I held her up against the car..." Hotchs attention returned to the conversation as he focused intently on Reid, "...I told her not to throw up on my shoes...I walked her up to her room...she went inside quickly, said she felt like she was going to get sick, she needed to lie down..." he eyes went wide, "I see it, just as she shuts the door..."

"What?" Hotch insists, "What is it?"

Reid purses his lips, " A shadow...the shape doesn't fit with the furniture in the room... It's a person, there was someone in her room."

He looks up to see the eyes of all his colleagues on him.

"Are you sure?" Rossi is the first to speak. His eyes are wide as he exchanges glances around the rest of the table.

"Yes," he insists pushing himself up from the table, "we need to get back to the hotel."

"You're sure?" Hotch reaffirms before standing to join him.

"Yes." Reid nods, barely pausing to do so as he passes him on the way to the door.

Hotch looks after him and exchanges glances with the rest of the team. Morgan's words spur him into action, "What are you waiting for? Even if he's wrong, do you want to take that chance?"

As if suddenly aware of where and who he is, he rises from the table and is out of the door in one swift movement. Climbing into the drivers side beside Reid he watches his mirrors as Morgan and Rossi take the other SUV, he pulls out of the parking lot at speed and with little finesse not caring about anything other than getting there.

Beside him Reid clear his throat, "What is it Reid?" he barked.

Reid shifted nervously on his seat, "I may have more insight into this situation than i originally let on."

"Reid, if something's wrong, we don't have time to stumble around, I need you to tell me anything relevant and we'll deal with anything that comes with it later, OK?" he told him with a cursory glance.

Reid nodded and cleared his throat, "Emily said she was in trouble, something to do with an old case and she needed to keep us all out of it." he chewed his lip glancing nervously over at his supervisor before fixing his gaze determinedly on the road ahead, "She told me that to explain why she ended your relationship." he waited for a response.

"OK." Hotch said carefully, feeling that he was not quite done, "And?"

"And she's pregnant."

Hotch nodded, "Of course she is," he muttered, "because we both suffer from absolutely impeccable timing."

"That's all I know." Reid finished.

Hotch nodded again, "Thank you for your discretion in not sharing that with the entire team. Though if something has happened to her they're going to find out pretty soon anyway. Do you think she was right? She's in danger?"

Reid considered it for a moment, "She seemed certain, she has seemed under more stress in the last couple of weeks."

"Not least because I've acted like a complete ass toward her." he muttered.

"You acted how she wanted, whatever she said to you, she said so that you'd be angry enough to cloud your assessment of her behaviour and keep your distance." Reid assured him.

Hotch nodded and paused as he pulled the car into the lot, he could see Morgan and Rossi entering behind them, taking a breath he asked Reid, "What do you think we're going to find in there?"

Reid looked back at him, "Honestly? I really don't know."

Hotch nodded and opened the car door, "Sitting here won't find out I suppose will it."

Reid followed his determined stride and Morgan and Rossi fell into step behind him in tense silence. In unison they reached for their weapons as they approached her door and found it ajar. Hotch allowed Morgan to pass him and take the lead, he was aware he shouldn't be leading on this, but really none of them should. He could hear his heart hammering as Morgan eased open the door. The room inside was in half light with the curtains closed but he could see immediately that she was not inside. It did not tell a peaceful tale.

"Clear." he heard Morgan mutter as he checked out the bathroom.

They all stood in silence surveying what was around them with a deepening sense of foreboding. The bedclothes had been dragged off the bed at one side, remaining in place around the bottom. Prentiss's phone, credentials and weapon were on a small table by the door, doubtlessly where she had abandoned them when she came through it. It didn't look as though they'd been any use to her. There was blood splatter on the floor and directly above on the wall. Hotch's stomach lurched when he saw it, but her tried to steady himself with the thought that it was no where near a fatal blood loss. But still, someone had surprised her, someone had hurt her, and someone had taken her.

Hotch wasn't sure how long he just stood absorbing what was around him and his own descending feeling of horror before Reid's voice filtered through the fog. He was in the bathroom surveying, it was dimly illuminated by a skylight.

"The sink has water splashes on it still, there's some traces of what looks like make up, she probably washed her face then lay down." he said gesturing to the bed.

"She didn't turn the lights on when she came in?" Morgan asked.

Reid shook his head, "No, she was probably feeling light sensitive, she literally said she was going to throw up then go to sleep."

Hotch bit his lip, hard enough for it to hurt trying to snap himself out of his guilt induced stupor. He _knew_ she wouldn't have run like that, he should have known something else was going on but he was too angry to see it.

"I'll go call the local PD, and see if the hotel has any surveillance footage." Rossi said interrupting his train of thought.

Hotch nodded his reply, turning his attention to the blood on the wall. Morgan joined his examination.

"From the height, she took a blow to the head." he commented as Morgan leaned in closer to examine it.

Morgan gestured to a downward splatter, "She was standing, this is from the blow." he followed a trail down to the floor between them, "She fell forward, maybe onto her hands and knees, it doesn't look like her head hit the floor. There's a void, here.." he pointed to a clear patch on the floor surrounded by blood droplets, "someone stood in front of her?"

Hotch inhaled sharply, "She was on her knees, bleeding in front of this guy."

Morgan nodded and eyed Hotch warily, "He must've pulled her back up against the wall, that made this patch here. There's some dark hair in it, maybe her head was turned?"

"What if _she _turned her head?" Reid interjected.

Hotch turned his attention in him, "To face away from her attacker? Doesn't seem like something Emily would do."

"No I agree which is why I think it's deliberate, she made sure there would be hair in the blood on the wall." he conjectured.

"So we'd know it was just a head wound?" Morgan asked.

Reid nodded enthusiastically, "Yes, and these, here," he gestured further down the wall, "are finger marks, they're her's, why would you take your hands off a bleeding wound and put them on the wall unless you had a good reason."

Hotch strode to the light switch and flicked the lights on, taking a moment to readjust before joining Reid and Morgan in their examination. Now that lights were on he could see a smudged handprint on the sheet, so she had landed at the side of the bed at some point as well. The bedcovers where dragged off from that point and across the floor slightly, it suggested someone had dragged her from the room. The lack of any further significant blood-loss suggested she had been drugged and not incapacitated by further injury.

"Hey." Morgans voice broke through his thoughts, "come look at this."

Reid joined them in reexamining the blood stains on the wall.

"Does that look like something to you?" Morgan pointed to an area midway down the wall. There appeared two shapes more defined than the rest, as if Prentiss had gone over them to assure they were seen, whilst being careful not to leave them too noticeable to her assailant.

"Are they letters?" Hotch asked turning his head.

Reid screwed up his eyes as he attempted to read them, "looks like an 'L' ... And .. An 'R'."

"She knew her assailant." Hotch stated flatly.

Reid turned to face him, "Yes probably, but this is not intended to directly give us their identity."

Hotch's brow furrow in confusion, "Then what is it?"

"Lauren Reynolds." Reid muttered, "A few days ago I overheard Emily on the phone saying that Lauren Reynolds is dead. When I asked she told me she was a friend who died in a car accident.

"Maybe her death is tied to whoever did this." Hotch suggested.

Morgan nodded his agreement, "I think we need to do some digging on the death of Lauren Reynolds."


	5. Chapter 5

Sense of danger chapter 5.

**No infringement intended, no profit made, I don't own anything.**

Pain and nausea were what pierced the foggy blanket around her, she had rather optimistically thought that being drugged and being mercifully unconscious for a while would help to numb the pain. She wasn't surprised to find that was what greeted her senses when she started to regain them. Joining the thudding headache which had punctuated her whole day was the sharp pain from the point of impact of the handgun Doyle had brought down onto her temple. She gradually became aware of more sensations, not yet daring to open her eyes. She was lying on something hard and her left hand was restrained somehow, tightly. She couldn't feel restraints anywhere else.

"Emily?" Doyle's voice was softer than she expected. He sounded almost concerned for her. She remembered being woken by his soft voice many other times. He would come close into her face and utter her name, nudging her awake in the early hours, caressing sleep away from her. However he behaved in what he considered to be business behind closed doors he had always been a gentleman. Always attentive she was ashamed to remember how he had been able to make her body respond to him in-spite of all the lines she knew she was crossing.

She opened her eyes a crack and brought a hand up to her face, "Yeah." she sighed. What did he want now? His last question replayed in here mind and she felt a fresh wave if nausea. There was no way she could prove she hadn't been pregnant, and he probably would never believe her so really they were in deadlock. Literally. She had thought he wanted revenge for the simple act of putting him away but in fact he wanted revenge on the team he thought had entrapped him into falling for a woman, letting her into his life and then allowing her to abort his child.

She squinted up at him as he sat on a chair facing her, she could see she was laying on a slatted wooden bench which was attached to the wall. Her left wrist was encircled with her own handcuffs, tight enough to have already cut her skin without her exerting any pressure on it. It's partner loop was fed through the slats on the bench leaving her tethered with a very limited range of movement. He was looking at her intently.

"What?" she croaked, "Why are you here? I'm not exactly going anywhere.". She eased herself up to face him.

He tilted his head as if considering his answer, "You didn't react very well to the drug. You've been completely out for a good while."

She snorted and shook her head to clear it, and failed, "You...wanted to make sure I didn't die of a drug reaction so you can have the pleasure of killing me yourself.". She spoke with a confidence she didn't feel. What had her dosing done to the baby? Did it even matter? She didn't feel confidence that she would be alive long enough to worry about it.

"Have I said I'm going to kill you?" his tone was mocking.

She pursed her lips, she knew it was a game, he would play with her expectations, hurt her physically and emotionally and allow her to recover only so that he could start again. "That's what you want to do isn't it?"

Again he seemed to be considering his answer, he rose and walked toward her pausing when he stood directly over her.

"What I _want_ is for you to admit what you did."

She pulled herself up further, trying not to put extra pressure on her wrist or move too suddenly and shake her head. "I was never pregnant Ian, I don't know what made you think that."

He looked disappointed and slouched back to his chair facing her. "I've seen your file."

"What file?"

"Your medical eval that was part of the debriefing."

"So?" she said with a confidence she didn't feel. If Doyle had had access to that someone on her team was feeding him information, they'd also be perfectly capable of altering the content.

"They referred you on to a woman's clinic." he stated flatly.

"Yes, because of the nature of our relationship. It's standard procedure to be screened." she watched Doyle bristle at the suggestion. The one thing she knew he wasn't was a womaniser.

"We were careful." he muttered.

"Yes." she stressed, "We were, I was taking the pill and did we ever ... not use protection?" she tried to disregard her surroundings and the fact that this was the most awful and bizarre situation. She could feel herself slipping back into the persona Doyle knew, after all she was trying to convince him that she was telling the truth and he had always trusted 'Lauren', he didn't know anything about Emily Prentiss, except that she had lied to him expertly for over a year and led to his capture and imprisonment in North Korea.

"No." he admitted. "In fact it was the only thing you wouldn't give ground on. Otherwise you were so very ammenable to my will, part of your brief no doubt. So is that really one of your character traits, Emily? Got yourself burned with an unplanned pregnancy did you?"

She had to admire both his quick mood shifting and lay profiling abilities, he was right and he knew it. She always considered Lauren to be someone else, a character she played, but she had managed to put enough of her real self in that Doyle, a sociopath incapable if empathy had been able to guess at a secret only a handful of people knew about. It begged the question, who was real? Emily or Lauren? Emily was controlled, independent, and uncompromising which had left her, up until recently, alone. Lauren was equally independent but had accepted Doyle's love, companionship, and commitment and had easily maintained a relationship with him. But the question was, which did she prefer? Maybe before she met Doyle Emily would have been more free and less controlling, maybe everything she had had to do, to push to one side, to swallow and to bite back had made her the Emily was she was today. Maybe without Lauren she would be an entirely different Emily.

Doyle continued to peer at her as she held her silence, "I'll take that as a yes." he sneered, "Not that it matters. How did this...little bundle come to be then?" he gestured at her middle, once again taking a seat opposite her.

She swung herself round to face him, but was forced to slide off the bench and sit on the concrete floor to allow her to straighten her back without pulling on her restrained wrist, "What do you care?" she asked him bluntly.

"I'm interested in what you've been doing with your life, whilst I've been fighting for mine.". His words continued to be low and dangerous in tone.

"You think that what? I just walked away totally unaffected by what I did?" she asked him incredulously. She had lost her objectivity and detachment, but currently she didn't care.

He blew air out between his lips in a dismissal, "Oh dear, your actions didn't go down so well with your bosses then?"

She looked at the floor, "Actually _they _were more than happy with my performance. But since then I've had to lie to every person I've ever met, about my job, about my history. I'm forty years old Ian and my longest and most successful relationship was with _you_ when I was pretending to be someone else." her eyes burned with anger as she lifted them to meet his. She knew it wasn't particularly directed at him but also at those who had led her into this situation. It was irrelevant now anyway as they were all dead, and she imagined she would be shortly too.

Doyle stood over her, she could feel the anger radiating off him, well at least he might make it quick, loose control and not torture her as much as he had planned to. She saw the flash of a blade in his hand and he grabbed her free arm before she had realised what he was doing.

"You have relationship issues?" he hissed, "I spent seven years being tortured. Do you know what I had to do to get out?" he pulled her hand flat as he spoke despite her best efforts to resist him, "I had to crawl through broken glass, just for starters." her eyes were drawn to his hands properly for the first time. She could see a mass of tiny scars covering his skin.

Emily watched in horror as he brought the knife up to her hand and wondered vaguely if he was going to try to cut it off. Instead he swiped the blade slowly, meticulously across her palm, once, twice, three times, following the lines which naturally crisscrossed it. She sucked her breath in and gritted her teeth determined not to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She watched, feeling disconnected as blood ran freely from her palm, across his fingers and began to drip onto the concrete floor.

He released her hand and stood as she left it outstretched, her breathing hard trying keep her composure.

"And that was just for starters." he growled, "Maybe I _will_ let you live. Then every time you stroke your baby's head they'll feel the scars left behind and they'll know what sort of person their mother is."

He turned and left the room, turning off the light and slamming the door behind him. In the totally darkness she clutched her bleeding hand into her chest and sobbed.


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks a lot for all the reviews & follows it means a lot that anyone is reading & taking time to review :)

Sense of danger-chapter 6.

Investigoogling

**I own nothing & make no profits, no infringement intended, only enrichment!**

Hotch took the opportunity to use the drive back to the station to try to gather his thoughts and regain some control over his impulses. He needed to slip back into profiler mode but all that was pumping around his brain at the moment were the thoughts of a partner and father to be who had failed in every respect. He hadn't seen through her lies, he'd allowed his feelings to cloud his judgement and so she had dealt with all of this alone. He hadn't been there to hug her tightly in wonder when she discovered she was pregnant, he hadn't nervously and excitedly picked out pre-natal vitamins and nagged her about her work schedule. No, in fact, he had been irritated by her mere presence, had felt satisfied when she looked tired and been dismissive when the whole team were trying to tell him she looked sick and stressed. And now he knew it made perfect sense. She would want to protect him and Jack, and the rest of the team, even at her own expense and she was an excellent profiler, she'd been able to precisely predict what she needed to do to make his own skill biased enough not to investigate her behaviour. Maybe he had just managed to illustrate why you shouldn't get involved with one of your team members. If they hadn't been involved she wouldn't have had the means to throw him off and he could have intervened in whatever was going on. If they hadn't been involved the rest of the team wouldn't have been convinced that her odd behaviour was solely down to the dissolution of the relationship they thought had been a well kept secret.

Beside him Reid drove, unusually he had relinquished his usual driver status and Hotch was also beginning to wonder if he should relinquish his role as lead, at least until this was over and Emily was back safe with him. With them. He tried to swallow down the thoughts in the way of his analytical nature but found it more difficult than he had ever experienced before.

"Are you OK?" Reid asked, quietly, uncharacteristically. Hotch wasn't sure he had ever heard him ask directly about how anyone was feeling. He supposed Emily's timely revelations to him had put him in an unusual position.

Hotch considered his answer, he knew Reid was close to Emily and didn't want to burden him further when he was doubtlessly struggling with his own feelings around having to investigate her disappearance. That's what he was calling it mentally because his mind could not allow connecting Emily to the term 'abduction' with all the grim statistics and knowledge that brought with it.

"Not really." he answered as honestly as he could, "I think I need to inform the rest of the team about my relationship with Emily. I'm not objective, I don't want to be removed from the case, but I need to know that my decisions will be...overseen."

"I don't think any of us are objective." Reid muttered.

"No," Hotch agreed, "But this is my partner, and my child at risk. Thank you for listening to her when she needed you...and while i was being an ass."

Reid held his silence for a moment and concentrated on the road before adding, "I shouldn't have left her. I knew there was something off I should have seen it sooner."

Hotch shrugged, "We probably all had opportunities to change whatever happened today, but Emily had more and for whatever reason she wanted to keep us out of this and she wouldn't have given any ground until she was ready."

"I suppose you're right, but it makes finding her now that much harder." Reid muttered as he pulled the SUV to a stop outside the station.

Hotch didn't waste a second more and immediately pulled the door open and strode confidently toward the entrance. Morgan and Rossi had stayed at the hotel to try to recover any surveillance footage which might be available. Hotch wasn't sure what the prospects of anything useful were. He hadn't noted an abundance of security cameras in the hotel, a couple in reception and one or two on the exterior of the building. At best they might see what sort of vehicle she was taken in and what sort of condition she was in when she left, was she on her own feet or had she been carried out. He and Reid had come back to the station to brief the local police as well as they could and to liase with Garcia in trying the find some information on Lauren Reynolds.

Hotch speed dialled Garcia the second they closed the door to the cramped room they had been using as an investigative base, unable to sit he stood leaning on the back of the chair he had been occupying previously and shifted from foot to foot, his gaze avoiding the chair where Emily had been sitting. Her pen still lay on the table beside her note pad. He could see she hadn't taken any notes, she had scribbled and doodled in the margins.

Garcia answered the phone abruptly, "Did you find her?" no witty greetings today.

"No we need to track down information on someone who might be connected to the person who took her." Hotch answered back, again without preamble.

"Who?"

"Lauren Reynolds," Reid interjected, "Emily told me she died in a car accident."

They could hear the click of a keyboard over the line briefly, then, "Any idea when, or where?"

Reid shook his head as he replied, eventhough he knew she couldn't see it, "No sorry."

There was a beat of silence across the line and Hotch felt his grip tighten on the chair in front of him, he was aware of Reid's gaze on him but chose not to return it.

"Nothing." came Garcia's despondent reply.

Reid stood up straighter, "What about we come at this a different way? Lauren Reynolds is dead so she can't give us any information, whoever she was speaking to is still alive and knows who Lauren Reynolds is."

Hotch chewed his lip, "Can you access her cell phone records?" it was a violation he knew, and depending upon what time frame Garcia was looking at her search would probably show up his less than professional involvement with her. But right now it didn't matter to him if she was mad about the invasion of privacy, disregarding warrants or whether their relationship would be thrust into the investigative forum. What mattered was finding her.

There was another beat of silence before Reid interjected, "The call was at nine twenty on the twenty eighth, I don't know whether it was incoming out going."

Garcia didn't respond verbally but they heard her resume keying numbers in after a slight pause, she knew as well as them that Emily would kick their asses for this, should she ever get the chance.

"The call was outgoing," she told them, "it's a foreign cell number, I''m trying to track who it belongs to now. The number belongs to a French cellular provider, but I don't seem to be able to get to who the number belongs to, I can tell you that it was used mostly in the south of France, an area called San Marino. And that it placed a called to Emily's cell later that day and has not placed another call since."

Hotch and Reid each stood and held their confused silence. Hotch was the first to find the words to express their shared inability to take meaning from Garcia's information, "How can this be about an old case? Her transcripts all show her service with the bureau being domestic. Isn't this more likely to be related to her family? She spent time in Europe growing up."

Reid shook his head, "She seemed certain it was an old case, I don't think she was lying."

"You're not sure? An unlisted phone number fits with someone working for the state department." Hotch challenged.

"It also fits with someone in law enforcement who's worried about an old case coming back to haunt them." Reid returned.

Garcia's voice interrupted them, "If the person on the other end was in Europe maybe whatever happened to Lauren Reynolds went down there."

"Can you find out?" Hotch asked attempting to keep the urgency from his voice.

"I can try but it's not very much more than investigoogling with what we have."

"What?" exclaimed Hotch.

Reid took a breath before explaining, "Investigoogling is a term used to describe using a search engine, usually google but not exclusively so, to investigate something without using any other source and not finding another source to verify."

Hotch's reply was an arched eyebrow. They had either entered an area where their own databases and jurisdiction would do them no good, or the twilight zone.

"Bingo!" Garcia exclaimed over the air, "Lauren Reynolds died in an automobile accident, in Tuscany almost seven years ago. Uummm, she was in her thirties, she was travelling alone on a remote road and lost control of the car on some ice, went down a ravine and was declared dead from head and facial injuries."

"There's plenty of scope for a murder to be hidden in a story like that." remarked Reid.

Thought the couldn't see it they both had the sense that Garcia was nodding as she sound of frantic keying came over the line once again.

"I know right? Just checking for images from the crash scene with the report, they might not be online anymore, wait...there's one of the crash site..."

"Send it." Hotch told her, "Is there any indication who the local investigating team were, which hospital and ME they might have taken the body to?"

"Initial enquiries carried out by locals...death ruled accidental. Wait...there's another image, it's Lauren Reynolds before the accident..._ohmygod."_

Hotch and Reid raised their gazes to one another briefly, "What is it?" Hotch asked tersely, he had had about enough surprises for one day.

"Its... the picture... Lauren...it's Emily." she stammered.

"_She_ was the investigator?" Reid asked.

"NO, she, Emily... She is... Was..whatever Lauren Reynolds. I can't explain it but it's her."

"Send the picture to us." Hotch mumbled. After just a couple of seconds both their cell phones beeped into life, revealing the picture Garcia had sent them.

"She's a little younger, her hairs lighter but, sir, that is Emily isn't it?" came Garcia's voice from the speaker phone.

Hotch nodded but remained silent.

"She doesn't have a twin?" Reid ventured.

Hotch shook his head.

"What the hell is going on?" exclaimed Garcia, "_Is_ she Lauren Reynolds? Did she fake her own death and assume the name of Emily Prentiss."

"Of course not," rationalised Reid, "We've met her mother." he shuddered slightly at the memory of the abrasive woman.

"And I met her before her days in the bureau, this other person is an alias." Hotch added, "I'm not sure what this gives us right now, even knowing that Emily posed as this person and was involved in something serious enough that she needed to be effectively dead all that tells us is that the records are going to be hard to find."

Reid thought for a moment, "You cant see who the number belongs to, but can you see if there are any calls in common with emily?"

"It takes more than one person to pull off a stunt like that?" Garcia asked, as her key-tapping resumed over the airwaves.

"And she knew she was in danger, someone had to have contacted Emily. If this other person is involved it's likely they were contacted too." Hotch replied glumly.

"Emily and our unknown in France have three numbers in common. One of them made an avalanche of calls and texts to both Emily and our unknown and the other two numbers they have in common and then settled into a short call once daily, before that ceased two days after our unknown in France also checked out of cellular service.". Garcia told them.

"They were trying to warn them, and then checked up on them daily, dialling in for long enough to ascertain it was them but not long enough for anyone watching to get a location." Reid surmised.

Hotch furrowed his eyebrows darkly, "Something prevented them from doing that for over a week."

"Did Emily maintain contact with the other two numbers?" Reid asked.

"One went dead before our unknown in France," there was a pause as she checked the information on her screens, "the other was still active last night, but Emily's was probably the last number they had to keep tabs on so they probably won't place another call for us to track."

"It's either our un-sub or the last person who can shed some light on what's going on here." Reid verbalised Hotch's thought processes. There would be no real way to tell the difference. Either this person had called her to threaten her or to check on her, they wouldn't be able to tell them apart from records.

"Can you identify _any _of the numbers?" Hotch asked.

He could hear Garcia's frustration, reading her face was not necessary, "No! They're all protected, all I can tell you is that the remaining number is US based."

"Garcia can you narrow the search for Lauren Reynolds using the date of death in the news report and look for records here? And can you send the last phone number over?" Hotch asked.

Reid regarded his supervisor, his face said he was set on a course of action, "What do you plan to do?"

"The only we can do right now, I'm going to dial the number and see who answers."


	7. Chapter 7

Thanks for all the lovely reviews glad people are enjoying reading! I promise to update my other WIP fear of flying once I get to a certain point with this.

**Sense of danger-chapter 7 - Conflict.**

I own nothing, no infringement intended, no profits made.

Ian Doyle stood for a moment on the other side of the door which he had just closed on Emily Prentiss. He examined the blood on his hands, her blood, and his stomach clenched when he heard her sobbing faintly from then other side of the door. This wasn't going at all how he planned, none of it. He wanted to enjoy it, but he wasn't. He had wanted to hurt her, hear her beg for mercy, for her life, for forgiveness but actually the only time he'd been able to lay a hand on her was in utter rage, not in the slow planned and controlled way he had imagined.

He became aware of a presence behind him, his brother, Liam.

"You should have killed her in that hotel room, or let me take her out." he told him gruffly. He didn't need to, Ian was well aware of his brother's opinions on Emily Prentiss.

"I let her in," he told his brother, and partner, through clenched teeth, "she's my mess to clean up."

"And are you actually going to do it this time? If you'd listened to me in the first place you'd have put a round in the back of her head right after you met her. Too good to be true. How many times did I tell you?" Liam shouted angrily at him.

Ian led his brother away from the room where Emily was held and met his brother face on. They were nothing alike, unsurprisingly as they were brothers in name only, being taken into the same orphanage in the same year they had been saddled with the same last name. Liam stood a good few inches taller than Ian and was of an entirely different build. He knew Liam's rage against Emily Prentiss was different to his own, and it was possibly more dangerous and volatile. Liam hated her for coming between them, for exposing the flaws in their relationship, and for ending the comfortable lifestyle their activities had allowed them in the later years. During their time with the IRA when they were truly at war their surroundings had been less than comfortable. After the peace accord they realised they didn't know how to do anything else, and that actually their particular skills could be very lucrative if you were wiling to go to the highest bidder and ignore the collapse of the cause which honed them. Through out all of it they had worked together, when Emily, Lauren, came into Ian's world Liam had felt put out. Even though Liam's assertions had turned out to be correct he still chalked his constant verbalisation of them up to basic jealousy.

"I don't want you to lay a finger on her Liam." Ian told him in a hushed but no less dangerous tone.

Liam rolled his eyes at his statement, "Fine, but that just means you're going to have to do it yourself. Soon."

"She didn't have an abortion Liam, she was never pregnant, whoever gave you that information gave it to you because they wanted _her_ to be the focus all our attention."

"You believe that because _she _said it?" Liam asked him in a mocking tone.

"I believe that because there are somethings that you can't change about yourself, no matter who you pretend to be." he retorted.

"It doesn't matter, she still used you, she still made you look like a fool, batted her eyelashes at you and got enough information for you to send yourself to prison.". Liam dismissed his reservations easily.

"Our job puts us directly in conflict with her work. Did she put a bullet in the back or our heads for what we did?"

Liam snorted, "I've allowed you to listen to her for too long, shes slithered inside your head again, _I was just doing my job,_ is that what she told you? The US government endorses acting like a prostitute to entrap people does it?"

"All I'm saying is we made ourselves targets, we shouldn't have been surprised someone was trying to take us down. And she never acted like a prostitute."

Ian could see the rage bubbling in his companion, "This is war man! Its how we've always lived, if someone takes one of yours, you take one of theirs. You cant leave a federal agent alive to tell the tale of who snatched her whether you are having second thoughts or not." his booming voice echoed in the empty spaces around them.

Ian shook his head, "That's where you're wrong. This isn't war. Our war ended years ago, we don't have any moral high ground here, we don't have a cause, all this is is revenge. And we aren't even avenging what we set out to. I don't do collateral damage Liam, you know that." he shouted back.

"Just because they changed the terminology doesn't mean the war is over, just because the press and _her majesties _government call the RealIRA criminals not terrorists doesn't mean the war is over. And SHE," he said with a sharp point to the locked door, "is not collateral damage, she was the linchpin of the whole operation which imprisoned you."

"I know that," he hesitated, "but she's pregnant." he doubted very much that information would affect Liam's thoughts as much as it had his own. He was surprised to see Liam pause and take stock.

He cleared his throat before speaking, "IF shes telling the truth, I can see why that makes you think twice, you had a relationship with her, or part of her, maybe thought about getting her pregnant." he mused, "But it doesn't change the fact that we can't leave her as a witness to us taking her or even being in this state. But I'll finish her for you, if you can't."

Ian shook his head, "No, you're right, I brought her into this both times, and I have to see her out."


	8. Chapter 8

Sense of danger-chapter 7. Confessions.

**Sorry for neglecting this story, I DO know where it's going just haven't found the time to commit it to 'paper', poorly child in the hospital for last few weeks. Thanks for your patience & all the reviews & feedback, you're awesome. **

**Again, I don't own anything, and am making NO PROFIT.**

Hotch swallowed hard and tried to steady his pulse rate before dialling. He could hear the rhythm of his own heartbeat ramping up as it rushed through his ears and he wasn't sure whether it was the result of fear or anger at this point. He wasn't overly pleased to see Rossi and Morgan return through the station door. The fact that they were finished so quickly meant that either there was no surveillance footage, or it didn't tell them very much, or it had told them news they didn't want. He tried to read their sombre expressions but was unable to.

He dialled the unidentified number without asking about their findings, there would be plenty of time for that later, he had to know who or what was on the other end.

Activating his cell's speaker once again he saw Reid brush off Morgan and Rossi's quizzical glances with an unspoken promise that information would be shared.

"Yes?" came a snipped precise English accent from the phone's speaker.

"Who is this?" Hotch said immediately.

There was a slight snort from the line, "You called me, so you first, who is _this?_"

Hotch pulled himself up tall and straight as he would if confronting a subject face to face, "This is supervisory special agent Aaron Hotchner with the FBI, whom am I speaking to?"

"Agent hotchner," came the surprised reply, "well, this is a turn up, I guess Emily didn't take my advice then. I warned her about getting involved with a member of her team, it clouds your judgement. Got herself into a spot of trouble I imagine if you're calling me."

Hotch didn't lift his face to meet the eyes of the rest of his team, he could deal with the revelations about their personal lives after the phone call, "You have me at a disadvantage, but I doubt it will be for long, you are the only person remaining from your team who is contactable."

"Which means either they've gone dark for their own protection or they're dead, or on their way there." The voice stated flatly.

Hotch hesitated, he wasn't sure if he had the measure of this guy. Sure he was cocky, more than the only presumed surviving member of a team should be, but he felt too detached to be involved in taking Emily. He needed to shock him into cooperating, "We know about Lauren Reynolds."

The voice on the line paused for a beat, "Really? Good for you, you don't need me then."

Hotch switched tack quickly, "We know about her because Emily left her initials on the wall of the hotel room she was taken from, she wrote them in her own blood. She's injured, she's pregnant and she's been missing for around ninety minutes. We need to cut through this crap to find her, now." he kept his gaze levelled at the screen of his phone to dodge the expressions of his colleagues.

This time there was no hesitation, "I'm coming to the station, my names Clyde Easter and I work for the British intelligence service."

As the phone line went dead, Hotch kept his gaze levelled at the desk beneath his hands momentarily to allow him time to gather his thoughts. He knew the remaining members of the team had just had a brief introduction to the finer points of his relationship with Emily and he wasn't sure what to tell them.

Raising his head he saw Rossi and Morgan's gazes levelled at him. Neither of them were disbelieving, just questioning.

"Emily's pregnant?" Morgan asked.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Rossi countered.

"I only just found out." Hotch intoned quietly.

Reid stepped in, "I guessed, today, because of the migraine, she's never had one before. Pregnancy can trigger migraines, I put it together with her avoiding caffeine, falling asleep on the plane as well as-"

"Reid kindly informed me in the privacy of the SUV on the way to hotel." Hotch interrupted gently, "Emily and I have been having a relationship for some time. She ended it a short while ago, we suspect that this was when this...situation came to light. She ended it to prevent me from being drawn in or from noticing her behaviour."

Rossi raised his eyebrows, "Well, it was effective, everyone else put her behaviour down to whatever was going on between the two of you as well. It didn't occur to me that she might be acting out of character for another reason, since you were too."

Hotch nodded allowing some of the conflict he felt to show on his face, "She's a good profiler." he muttered ruefully.

"She didn't trust any of us enough to let us help her.". Morgan voiced his disapproval of her behaviour but could not keep the tinge of regret from his voice, he had known she was acting out of character and had allowed himself to be brushed off to save facing the 'wrath of Emily' he would endure for being pushy, or analysing her. Had his unwillingness to endure her temper got his friend killed?

Reid interjected in his internal debate, "She felt certain that anyone who became involved would be in considerable danger."

"And she was correct." came an unfamiliar voice from the doorway.

Raising his gaze to the newcomer Hotch found he was not at all as he expected. Having heard Clyde over the phone he had formulated a mental image of a typical grey clad British agent with a regulation haircut and briefcase. In fact what greeted his eye was far from it. Easter was a fairly dishevelled looking man in his forties, his sandy hair was disarrayed, clad in faded blue jeans that had seen better days and a nondescript grey t-shirt over which he wore a black leather jacket. It was far from the clipped appearance he had come to expect from the intelligence services.

"You have us at a disadvantage." Rossi intoned stonily at the newcomer.

Easter didn't seem swayed, impressed or intimidated by the group before him and Neely brushed off the remark, "Perks of the job."

Hotch's patience evaporated at the sight of him, "Did you come here to play games or give us the information we need? We don't have time to inflate your ego."

"My ego is not in need of maintenance thank you," he replied sharply, "What have you got so far?"

"Prentiss has been strung out for a couple of weeks, stressed, tired, jumpy. Today we sent her back to the hotel sick, on the drive she told Reid that something was going on with an old case, but she couldn't ask for our help because it would put us in the firing line." Morgan listed the finer points in an emotionless tone as he regarded Easter coldly.

"You're familiar with Emily's personnel file?" Easter addressed Hotch.

"As section chief I am familiar with the team's histories." he replied.

"She ever talk about any cases she worked in her.. What?.. Ten year history in the bureau?"

Though he knew the question was not directed at him Morgan couldn't help but step in, his frustration with the day's already long list of stresses bubbling beneath his skin, "No, not really, but the function of this team is to work, not tell campfire stories."

If Easter registered his aggression he didn't show it, "Did she ever mention a co-worker, friend?" he rephrased.

"She talked about her family a little." Reid offered.

"No she never talked about her history with the bureau." Hotch interjected, judging that the general chat had gone on too long.

"Why do you think that is?"

"Why don't you tell us?" Rossi allowed some of his own frustration to surface.

"Because her bureau history is a lie." he stated, taking a seat while the rest of the men stood, looking on in confusion.

"She lied to us?" Morgan growled.

"No actually she probably didn't, her personnel file did. You all knew what was in it before she joined the team, she never told you anything because Emily has never liked to lie. She lied to you, Hotch, when she walked into your office because you already knew her and she nearly walked out again because she hated doing that so much."

Hotch kept his tone measured as he regarded the man before him. If he had been privy to their first conversation in his office had he been there all along? Had Emily been confiding in him the whole time?

"So if her bureau history is a lie, what exactly had Emily been doing?"

"She was part of my team. We were a CIA task force working counter terrorism."

"CIA?" Morgan shouted, "You gotta be kidding me?"

Easter rounded on him, finally allowing some of his own composure to slip, "You find that hard to believe? She's a natural with languages and one of the most controlled individuals I've ever met, she was perfect for the job."

"What job?" Hotch pressed, "Hundreds of agents must work counter terrorism, what did your team do to become targets?"

"We were a task force named JTF-12, we used profiling to try to get ahead of these guys in much the same way you do. But often that wasn't enough, so we used an additional tactic. We sent agents in under cover to infiltrate their organisation." he explained.

"Lauren Reynolds was Emily's alias?" Reid put in.

Easter nodded his affirmation, "Lauren Reynolds was a persona Emily assumed to get close to a rogue IRA captain named Ian Doyle."

"Close?" Hotch said quietly.

Easter met his eye for the first time and nodded, "Yes, he was meticulous we knew the only way we'd be able to blindside him was by playing on his ego, by disrupting his relationship with his brother, by putting a woman between them."

"You asked her to seduce him, so she could profile him?" Rossi asked incredulously.

"Not originally, no. Flirt, yes, date even but it became obvious we were going to have to play the long game with him. Over time it was more appropriate to allow the 'relationship' to develop in the normal way. Emily did what she knew was necessary." he watched his new companions reactions as he spoke. Divulging details of Emily's past was not something he relished doing but he knew that they wouldn't be satisfied with half truth at this point and would be able to tell the difference.

"Why didn't you pull her out?" Morgan challenged.

"I did," Easter responded, "I could see it was taking it's toll on her and I moved the arrest forward, so much so we didn't have enough information to get him talking."

"So what did you do?". Hotch asked.

"We faked Lauren Reynolds death, and we told him we killed her, and that she died begging for the life of their unborn child."

"You lied to him?" Hotch growled through clenched teeth.

"Yes, Emily told us he often talked about having a family, to replace his own, we thought it would be the trigger that would get him talking."

"But it wasn't." Hotch surmised.

Easter shook his head, "No, he knew we were lying because Lauren...Emily, had been adamant about ... using precautions," he paused to take in the pained expression on Hotch's face, "so he knew the information about wanting a family must have come from her."

Rossi inserted himself between Easter and Hotch, "So basically you tipped him off that Emily was undercover because you're such a poor profiler you failed to take into account your own agent's effect on the situation and the fact that you can't shed certain characteristics no matter who you pretend to be."

Hotch starred at both Rossi and Easter for a minute or so before replying, "And now he has her and he may make the death you described to him a reality for us."


	9. Chapter 9  darkness

Sense of danger -chapter

_My sincere apologies for the REALLY long wait. Real life has been an utter b*tch and eroded my will to write anything. Thanks for your continued reading. _

No infringement intended, no profits made. I own nothing.

In the pitch dark Emily found her other senses were sharper, unfortunately that meant the the throbbing pain in her head and the stinging across the palms of her hands had instantly become heightened. She tried to make anything out in the dark to distract herself but complete darkness was all that greeted her straining eyes. Finding the darkness swirling in front of her dizzying she decided to close her eyes for the time being, it made no differences to what she could see.

Ignoring the pain and the splitting sensation across the palm of her hand as she straightened her fingers she gingerly felt along the length of the bench she was she secured to, feeling for weaknesses and imperfections. The point at which her handcuffs were secured already had an indentation from the weight of her pulling against it. The wood was not smooth and new, it was rounded from age and splintered in places, the room smelled damp and she hoped the wood was damp too. If she was lucky she might be able to wear it through, but it depended on how much time alone would have. Knowing her hands continued to ooze she realised her bloody finger prints would litter the bench where she had felt around her. Doyle would expect her to try to find a way out so he wouldn't be surprised to see she had done just that, but if he realised she might be able to free herself he would move her and she'd be forced to start again.

Flicking her fingers into the hoop of the handcuffs she continued to pull and scrape the metal across the wood, taking satisfaction from hearing the wood grain splinter and wear with her efforts. At the same time she extended her other hand as far as she could reach and pressed her palm against the bench. She tried not to think of the state her bleeding hands were in as she smeared her own blood onto the the damp and dirty bench to obscure the point on it's frame that she had been interested in. An infection was the last of her worries right now, if she managed to get out of this with just a wound infection to worry about she'd consider herself utterly blessed.

Emily continued to scrape at the wood with her shackled left hand as she brought her right hand back across her body and placed it on her abdomen. Resisting the urge to clench her fist against the laceration across it she placed it flat against her and sighed. Bringing her legs up and lowering her forehead to rest against them she curled up around the tiny life nestled at her centre. Silently she offered an apology to her baby. _I'm sorry I brought you into this, I'm sorry I alienated your daddy, but I'm not sorry you're here and I'm going to do everything I can to protect you from this, from him...from me._

She wondered what the team were doing. Had Reid caught the letters she'd left on the wall? How much had they managed to uncover? Was there anyone left who could tell them what she'd been involved in or would it be up to them to sift through records and come to realise that much of what they thought they knew about her was fabrication. She thought about Hotch and how much she regretted not confiding in him, and how much she hoped she would get an opportunity ask him forgiveness. She had known exactly what buttons to go for in order to push him away and blind him to the real reason behind her behaviour. Hotch was the best profiler she'd ever met but she knew that Clyde's warnings that being involved with a team member clouds your judgement had been proven correct. Hotch didn't think her capable of such deceit so he had been unable to see it. She hoped Reid hadn't told them about the pregnancy when they discovered she had been taken, it would only cloud their judgement further.

All this should have been so different, she mused. She should have had some romantic scheme to tell Hotch about their baby. Cooked him dinner and wrapped the test stick up in a box to present him with it. No, that wasn't them, she knew that, but everyone could have their fantasies. In reality if Ian Doyle hadn't surfaced the momentous moment would probably have consisted of her peeing on a stick in the bathroom of the jet while Hotch waited outside, a quick kiss of congratulation behind the curtain, then onto the briefing and the next case. She wondered under those circumstances how the team would have reacted to the news. Rossi would have remained stoic and supportive, Garcia hysterically excited and cross that she didn't know first, Morgan was difficult to predict. He would be accepting but quiet until he came to terms with the changes that would be happening within their team. Reid she couldn't call at all. They had certainly had their moments. They got off to a good start but his anger soon turned toward her as the newest member of the team in the aftermath of his experiences with Tobias. They had sorted out the kinks in their relationship but had experienced something of a role reversal and she had looked out for him and felt protective of him despite the fact that he was more established.

She flexed her fingers to test to see if the bleeding had stopped and found it slowed and she had sticky congealed patches on her hands, and probably her clothes. Smoothing her hand over her abdomen where it lay she imagined she could already feel a slight protrusion, firmness at the bottom near her pelvis. Would this baby have dark hair like her and Hotch or be sandy like Jack? Boy or girl? Tall or small? Would she get to find out?

She was almost grateful to see Ian Doyle open the door and flick on the grimy light bulb above her, despite the fact it seared her eyes. Her thoughts had been running away with her in the dark, she had brought herself to the point of panic without any help from Doyle. Squinting against the light while her eyes adjusted she was pleased to confirm it was Ian not Liam who had entered. Liam had always hated her, she imagined the information which had come to light about her had not exactly improved his disposition toward her.

With a piercing scrape Ian return the chair to it's position opposite her. She raised her head to meet his stare, she could see him assess her appearance and take a brief glance at the blood staining on the bench around her. He shook his bead lightly.

"I had different plans for this." he admitted in a quiet voice.

She chewed her lip but kept her silence, she couldn't read him. Perhaps because he remained undecided himself how he now wanted this to turn out.

"Liam is adamant we can't let you survive, that you will finger us and we... I will go back to jail."

"They already know that you have me, they're just working out the where. And if they come in here-"

"Yeah I know, like Liam says they'll come in shooting." he sighed.

Emily paused before chancing her luck, "And what do you say?"

Ian Doyle raised his eyes to meet her's properly for the first time since he had reentered. "I am precise, no collateral damage. But I have inflicted damage on families because of the information I had, I killed their families with them."

Emily starred back uncomprehending for a moment, then it dawned on her the Sean had a daughter. "You killed their children?" she whispered.

"Because I thought you had killed _ours._" he sighed, much more evenly than Emily would have expected.

"Why?" she shouted, "Why did you think that? Women go to gynaecologists all the time, not just for terminations, Ian!"

He shook his head and stood, facing away from her, "In prison, they gave me the newspaper report about you...about Lauren dying in a car accident. The next day, your buddy Clyde Easter came to see me to gloat about how he had fabricated the report and killed you himself, that you were pregnant and begged for the life of our child."

She lowered her head, "He went too far."

Turning back to face her he addressed her again, "Yes I knew it was a lie because that was the only thing I wanted that you wouldn't give me, and I knew that...trigger... had to come from you because you were the only person who knew I wanted a family."

"So you knew I wasn't who I said I was." she whispered.

"But when I saw your file, I thought maybe some of what he said was true."

"You can't avoid a grain of truth in a lie?"

He nodded as he paced.

"Whoever gave you that information was trying to manipulate you, Ian." she said quietly.

"I think I managed to work that out for myself." he muttered.

She chewed her lip, this changed the game. She had always dreaded Ian Doyle resurfacing, knowing he had grounds for a sizeable vendetta against her, but someone had a bigger vendetta than him. Someone had wound him up and let him go in her direction. Someone hated her more than Doyle did. The trouble was she had no idea who it might be.


	10. Chapter 10  crisscross

Sense of danger - chapter 10,crisscross.

_Thanks for sticking with me, I promise not to leave you hanging too long. I'm not a fan of huge amounts of dialogue but there wasn't another way to do this chapter, sorry!_

**No infringement intended no profits made.**

"We need your case files on Doyle, everything." Morgan was the first to break the silence, "We need to see his profile, his history so we can work out where he took her."

Easter fingered the edge of the table with his head low before meeting Morgan's gaze, "I don't have access. Doyle was our last case, we were felt to be an ineffective team after I moved the arrest up and Jeremy and Tsia became involved. That was the end we all went back to the agencies we came from, Emily wanted out of the CIA, but it took her a while to actually get out."

Hotch rounded on him, "You left Emily out to dry, you could have told us we would have protected her, you could have told anyone that Doyle was out. Instead you told Emily and let her run herself into the ground with worry and left her wide open for him to pick her off-" he stopped himself aware his voice was gaining volume as his temper gained ground.

"I didn't it was Sean our team leader who contacted her, I told him to leave her alone, let us track Doyle down. He shouldn't have been able to find any of us!" he shouted back.

"It seems Doyle is as skilled in infiltration as your team." came Reid's voice, the only one maintaining an air of calm as the rest of the men allowed the tempers to flare at one another.

Easter nipped the bridge of his nose as he exhaled deeply, "You're saying he had someone working within a government organisation?"

Rossi shrugged his shoulders, "Or someone has a bigger axe to grind against your team or one of it's members than Doyle, and they have access to your teams records."

Hotch paced slowly, he had always done this to help clarify his thought processes, something about the movement tuned out distractions. "Whoever gave Doyle that information made sure he had the most to settle with Emily."

Easter nodded his head in slow agreement, "When I was the team leader, who assigned the agents, and I was the one who fed Doyle false information to try to manipulate him."

"This isn't about Doyle then." Morgan interjected, "It's about Emily, and someone who knew enough about your cases to manipulate Doyle."

Hotch continued his pacing, feeling his pulse rate and anxiety rise as he tried to fight off the feelings of helplessness. He pushed down the memories of racing toward Hayley and Jack. In some ways this this was so much worse, back then he knew where they were and what Foyet intended to do, now they had lost any handle on what was going on here. An enraged terrorist with an axe to grind was much easier to profile than a enraged terrorist being fed false information by an unknown person with an unknown axe to grind shaker Emily Prentiss.

"Why didn't they kill me?" Easter asked aloud.

Morgan snorted, "Believe me, I've been asking myself the same question since you walked in."

Hotch shot Morgan a look, though he could not deny he shared his subordinate's sentiment toward to scruffy English agent.

"They wanted to leave someone behind who suspicion would fall on to? Someone passed that information on, you're the only member of your team left alive." Rossi proposed.

"But you haven't suspected me, not of colluding with Doyle anyway. Whoever set this in motion had a good enough knowledge of profiling to be able tom predict what Doyle would do, as well as access to the trams records." Easter mused.

Hotch tilted his head, "Did Emily have any issues with any if the profilers on your team?"

"No and they're all dead, apart from me." Easter answered shortly.

"Its not unlikely that he killed his informant." Reid told him from his seated position, he remained laid back in his chair, happy to allow the overwhelming power struggle continue above him while picking out and pointing out relevant information.

"No, they profiled from information Emily gave them," Easter shook his head as he spoke, "I'm the only one on the team who knew what went on while she was uncover, that she maintained a romantic involvement with him."

"The _pretence _of a relationship." Hotch growled through clenched teeth.

"So only a higher up CIA agent could access them?" Morgan asked.

"In case you haven't noticed I don't actually work for the CIA. You guys are obsessed with your own little arrangements. Other countries do operate intelligence operatives internationally you know?"

"So which agency stores the files from Emily's time undercover with Doyle? The British secret service?" Hotch barked, he was fast loosing patience with conversation and jurisdictional guidelines, he just wanted to find her and end this.

"Well yes, Doyle does originate from the United Kingdom you know. That's why I was the lead on his case."

"So maybe you were kept alive so you could give us the information." Rossi proposed.

"What do you mean?"

Hotch stepped in, putting himself between the two men, he wanted to make sure he had Easters full attention since it seemed he was prone to tangental thinking, "They know you can tell us who Doyle is, but no one else on the team could, you were kept alive to stop us looking into who has access to the case files."

"Did she work with any _other _British profilers in your team? A contact on an assignment?" Rossi pushed.

"No, British profilers are kind of a rare breed." he remarked, seeming pleased with himself.

Reid snorted, "Hardly, for a small island you guys breed them, some of the most famous serial cases ever studied have occurred in Great Britain, Jack the Ripper, Fred West, Mary Black-"

"We didn't have any other UK contacts on the team." he insisted.

Behind him Morgan snorted, "British profilers all all the same, arrogant, exhibitionist, but afraid to get their hands dirty."

"What are you talking about?" Easter shouted.

"Mick Rawson." Reid muttered.

Hotch whirled to face him, "What?"

"Mick Rawson." Morgan repeated, nodding.

"He's British, has a sealed past with the British secret services, and he received an amazing right hook from Prentiss.". Reid informed them.

"He what?" Hotch shouted.

Morgan lowered his head, "It was after the case, the were talking outside, he tried it on, pushed too far, said something, I don't know, she responded appropriately but he flew out with a black eye."

"Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

"The case was done, Emily, she can handle herself. Rawson deserved it, he'd been cruising that entire case." Morgan defended himself.

"It's possible he already knew about the Doyle case, maybe that wasn't a romantic proposition, maybe he was letting Emily know he'd seen the files."

Rossi nodded his agreement with Easters statement, "I think we need to unseal the files on Mick Rawson."


	11. Chapter 11

Emily Prentiss was in the dark again, both literally and figuratively. She had preferred it when she thought Doyle was coming for her, uninfluenced to settle the scorecard she had started by pretending to be in love with him then turning him in. That was straightforward, predictable, profile-able. Now the mixed messages Doyle had been given had made him uncertain and off balance and had the same effect on her. At least being tortured to death by a vengeful ex-Mark was what she had expected, now she had no idea what would happen. She thought she knew that Doyle no longer wanted to kill her, her pregnancy had put doubts in his mind, reminded him she was just a person with a life and people who care about her. She also knew for certain that he was not a man who did other people's dirty work for free, or at his own expense. They both now suspected someone had fed his contacts information specifically designed to motivate him to seek revenge on her, that was why he had backed off. She couldn't predict several things. What effect Liam would have on the situation. He hated her and wanted her dead, he may act on his own, or goad Ian into killing her. If someone had really set her up they weren't going to to call it a day because Doyle did, they were going to try again. She needed to find out who was doing this. Certainly she had made some enemies, no one was thankful for getting caught that much was certain but she didn't think she had helped to arrest anyone with as much reach as this needed. She knew terrorism was an area which drew committed and revengeful followers but she didn't think that any of the terrorist organisations they had involvement with had a lot of sympathy at government level in any country, apart from Doyle. The conflict in Ireland had divided a lot of people, families and organisations and the IRA had had sympathisers. She didn't think those that kept operating after the peace accord kept many but could it be possible that a sympathetic contact had turned the relationship around and used Doyle?

The most likely location for a contact sympathetic to Doyle would be the UK or US, other countries had little or no interest in the conflict in Ireland. But she had never worked in the UK and surely someone in the US could just arrange to have her shot on the job here, they wouldn't have the needed to go the trouble of digging Doyle up to use against her. She wondered if perhaps the point was to discredit her and uncover the lies she'd told her team since she joined, but couldn't figure out what that would accomplish unless someone was getting pleasure watching from the sidelines.

She thought about her mother and her role in the state department. She cursed herself for not paying much attention to her mother's career. Emily had always considered it little more than an inconvenience which had been at the root of her disrupted childhood and her worst mis-deeds as an adolescent. Her mother had always felt distanced both physically and emotionally and she had come to accept and even prefer that. Was it possible a political enemy of her mother's had targeted her? She dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to her, at forty surely she beyond the age where anyone thought her parents would bargain for her? No she knew whatever was going on here she was it's focus, not her family. Though she would have liked the luxury of being able to blame her

parents for her current predicament.

Footfall approaching the door alerted her that someone was about enter. As she listened to her company releasing the locks she braced herself physically and mentally for whatever would come next. She sat herself more upright, her knees and free arm pulled up and across to protect herself. She was almost relieved when the dim light snapped on to reveal Ian Doyle and not his brother Liam at the entrance. Taking a glance behind him she couldn't see anyone else in the damp hallway outside. Not that it mattered, she wasn't going anywhere.

Emily watched as Doyle approached her and tensed as he once again pulled a chair up after he closed the door behind him. Wordlessly he handed her a bottle of water. She regarded him cautiously then accepted it and took a few cautious sips.

"It isn't poisoned." he said flatly.

She moved her head in a slow nod, "Nausea." she answered in the same disinterested tone he used on her.

Doyle inhaled and sat back in his chair to regard her fully, "Liam won't let you walk out of here."

She pressed her lips into a thin line, "I know that. Why are you wasting your time in here...with me?"

He pursed his lips in return, "Because I don't much like to think I'm doing someone else's dirty work. Maybe I would've done it for a price, but I don't like being played."

Emily broke eye contact with him to hold her eyes closed as she pressed the back of her hand to her lips to stave off a wave of nausea, the last thing she needed was to start throwing up again now. When she opened her eyes she kept her gaze fixed on the concrete in front of her and tried to level off her breathing. She heard rather than saw Doyle shift in his chair above her and she placed the bottle of water back on the floor, deciding it was a bad idea.

"You should keep it, and just keep sipping it." he told her.

She wasn't sure she could answer so she placed her hand back on the bottle to show her assent for his suggestion.

"You're really pregnant, aren't you?" he muttered, though they both knew it was not a question.

She lifted her face to meet his gaze again, her expression showing him her irritation and fatigue, "What? Do you want me to do a test or something? Yes Ian I'm pregnant, don't you think I would have made some attempt to get out of here by now otherwise?"

He shrugged, "Nah it's not that. You look like shit, recognise that look anywhere."

"Spend a lot of time with pregnant women do you?"

He tilted his head as he told her, "The women in prison were always pregnant, because the guards and prisoners were always raping them. There's no sex segregation in north Korea."

She knew her face displayed her disgust at his statement as she wondered what his involvement had been. He had always been the perfect gentleman with her, she couldn't imagine him raping a woman. But then betrayal and the prison environment could change a man, that she knew.

"Oh don't worry, you know I didn't have much time out of solitary, I didn't waste it on women, not after you."

She wasn't sure she wanted or deserved the credit for keeping Doyle from becoming a rapist.

"So what about you?" he said, breaking her thoughts.

"What?"

He gestured to her middle, "Who's the daddy? Didn't see anyone around when we were watching you. One night stand? Thought you were too careful to end up knocked up that way Emily?"

She tried not to bristle at his comments, "We're not together anymore."

He eyed her with interest, "Well, must've been fairly recently, you're not _that _far pregnant."

She sighed at his continued questions, "What does it matter to you?"

"Just interested. You're not the type to fall pregnant by accident, so I'm wondering how you ended up on your own.".

"He has a son already, I broke it off with him to protect them from ... This." she told him.

He nodded his understanding, "Very noble." he commented, "Does he know about your previous line of work?"

She hesitated and chewed her lip anxiously, "He knew some of it, I imagine he has learned a lot more since you took me."

Doyle nodded as he Rose and paced, "He's an FBI agent too."

Emily nodded her reply as she chanced another mouthful of water.

"What would he do to me if he got his hands on me?" he snorted.

"Nothing, he'd arrest you but he wouldn't hurt you. Besides I didn't exactly let him down gently. I had to make sure he'd leave me alone outside of work."

"Does he know about the baby?"

"He didn't but he probably does now." She knew that Reid would probably spill the second it became obvious that she was missing. She wondered who realised she was gone, who found the room, if anyone recognised the initials she'd written in her own blood. "How long have I been gone?" she asked, between the migraine, morning sickness, blow to the head and drugging she had no idea how many time had passed.

Ian met her gaze, "It's almost midnight. Thirteen hours."

She nodded, unable to form a reply.

"When did you last eat?" he asked her.

She searched her brain for the answer, she hadn't been able to look at breakfast let alone eat it, she was tired and had opted for a glass a water and some crackers for dinner so she could go to bed, "Lunchtime yesterday." she told him.

"I'll see what I can get you." he said, standing and turning toward the door, he turned back to face her and appeared to be considering his next action before saying, "Would he deal?"

Emily's head snapped up surprised, "What do you mean?"

"Would he deal? Your return in exchange for time in a US prison, no extradition." he asked her.

"I don't know, he used to be a prosecutor so I doubt it." she told him, plus, she added silently, she would never ask him to compromise himself to get her out of the hole she had gotten herself into.

"He sounds like he won't have trouble accessing your history with the CIA if he goes looking." he commented.

"He's my unit chief," she admitted, "But the CIA don't hold the case files they're with the UK intelligence services."

He nodded his understanding, "Guess he'll have to talk to your ex then, mmm awkward." he said chuckled as he reached for the door.

"What? Who are you talking about?" she asked a little louder than she intended, afraid he would leave again before she found out.

"Your team leader, the British guy, Easter? You and he were an item, that's why your little band was split up wasn't it?"

Her eyes went wide, "No, we weren't, ever in a relationship. Who told you that?"

"Liam, couldn't have imagined anyone packing their girlfriend off to bed to terrorist in the line of duty though even when he said it."

"Who would've told Liam that though? Why?"

Doyle shrugged as he reached for the door once again, "You got me, doesn't really matter though does it? We've all been played, guess now you know a little bit how it feels."

He slammed the door behind him leaving Emily sitting in the dark again.


	12. Chapter 12  links and leaks

_**Thanks so much for all the reviews & messages, and thanks for sticking with the story. nearly at the end then going back to my other H/P work in progress, fear of flying. Couldn't resist a little nod to the gorgeousness that is Hotchityhotchhotch my other favourite writer of all things Hotly. If you spot it drop me a review to say so ;-)**_

Hotch felt like he had paced the entire length of the United States in the last few hours, a tight knot in his gut kept him from overdosing on coffee like he normally would. He felt like someone had hit some sort of weird replay button, the woman he loved and his child taken away from him again. A child he hadn't even known about. Only this time he was even more clueless as to what was going on or how to stop it. He wasn't immune to the concerned glances and furrowed brows from the team, he was surprised they hasn't barred him from the investigation altogether. If you could call it an investigation. They hadn't involved the local police or bureau field office, he hated the idea of his relationship with Emily being poured over by strangers, along with all the skeletons in his closet and hers. He was relatively sure there would be little of interest in his but he had no desire to hear a room full of strangers discuss Emily's relationship with Doyle. He understood why she hadn't told him, clearance levels were the least of it, she'd wanted to make a new start and not carry the baggage from previous assignments. He wasn't so sure the rest of the team shared his point of view. He also wasn't sure he cared. They'd agreed that between them they had all the skills and resources necessary to find Emily and that they would not involve other agencies unless entirely necessary, they couldn't be sure that Doyle didn't have more contacts locally and that's why he'd chosen to take action here even though it was clear he'd been following Emily's movements for quite some time.

As he watched, the rest of the team huddled on computer screens or talked animatedly down phones. Hotch found himself at a loss for something constructive to do. He knew what he wanted to do, tear someplace apart with his bare hands until he found her. This isn't how he imagined this. Before she walked into his office that evening he'd booked a night away for them and all he could think about packing was a small box he was still keeping in his sock drawer. They wanted to have a baby together, they were going to have a baby together. He wondered how long she'd known, how many weeks she was, how she had been feeling. Examining his memory of the last few weeks he remembered how she'd looked tired, had rarely joined the team for meals and had been quiet and withdrawn from them. He had put this down to their break up but could see now it was more than that. He hadn't seen her with a cup of coffee for weeks, she'd been sipping water and very little else from what he could remember. She had fallen asleep on the jet a few times, something she had never done before, everyone else had but in the years she'd been with the team not once had she fallen asleep on the jet or in an SUV. Rossi had commented that he had never seen her sleep before, of course Hotch had beside him in bed but knew Rossi was right she wasn't prone to 'dropping off'. At the time he thought it was a tactic to evade talking to him.

He cursed himself for acting exactly the way she had predicted, but knew that was an indication of how well they knew each other and he guessed that was the risk you ran in any relationship, of being manipulated. And she had manipulated him to prevent him putting himself and Jack in between her and Doyle. He couldn't say he would have done the same thing but he knew that he would do anything to protect her in the longterm even if it meant hurting her in the short term, so he understood her motivation.

He saw Rossi making a bee-line for him and returned his eye contact, silently granting permission for his friend to interrupt his solitary brooding.

"How you holding up?" Rossi asked him quietly, careful to keep to his back to Reid who was well known in the team for his lip-reading skills.

Hotch paused briefly before answering, weighing the answer he should give as a supervisor against the answer he knew his friend was seeking, "I just never thought I'd get another chance, you know?"

Rossi nodded his understanding and held his silence as he waited for the younger man to continue.

"I knew Emily had ... things in her past she was less than open about. But I thought it was mostly to do with.. well, you know,... the situation Matthew Benton supported her through, and her family. I knew her bureau history didn't make sense when she joined the team, she's a skilled profiler, you don't develop those skills in the desk job her personal file described. I just brushed the doubts away and hoped she was just _really _naturally talented."

"She is." Rossi offered.

Hotch nodded, "I didn't want to see that she was lying to me."

"Was she?" Rossi countered.

"What do you mean?"

"Sure, she didn't _disclose_ her entire history, who does? But the way she works, how she is with the team, how much she loves you and Jack that's not a lie, that's not an act, that's who she is, and that doesn't change no matter what her employment history is Aaron."

"Thank you."

"You know it, you just needed reminding, now let's find her so Garcia can give her hell for Reid being the first to know we're going to have a beautiful BAU baby."

Hotch allowed a smile to cross his face before gathering himself to address the whole team working in front of him, "So where are we?" he asked, inviting some flow of information.

Garcia was the first to respond to his query, "Mick Rawson has a shady shady past here in the US and in the UK. He was once part of the British secret service working overseas, there are few records of exactly what he did, it looks as though he was also counter intelligence and undercover, like Emily. Theres no mention of him crossing paths with Doyle, but he did have contact with IRA sources so it's possible he knew Doyle or one of his associates. Several years ago he was discharged from his position after an altercation with his supervisor. He then worked for the highest bidder who would hire him and that's where he crossed paths with Cooper**. **He hired him to his team, which operated for about a year and was disbanded after a case that went bad. Rawson left the bureau and has been basically living off the grid since then."

"Did you have any knowledge of him while he was in the British intelligence services?" Hotch asked him.

Easter raised his eyebrows at the question, "Contrary to popular belief not all British people know one another, it is a fairly large Island."

Hotch answered the man's response with a solitary raised eyebrow of his own, meeting him with steady eye contact.

Easter sighed, "No, I would only know him if he were on my team, I never worked with him, we don't exactly get issued with an address book with all other agent's details in, you know?"

"Seems like he has the antithesis of your career," Morgan chipped in, "Every time you got promoted he got kicked off an assignment."

"I don't know him, I didn't do this to him." Easter insisted.

"And yet you're here, while the rest of your team is dead or in Doyle's hands." Rossi affirmed.

"So?"

"So, maybe that's deliberate. You got every position you went for, while he drifted from post to post ending up working as a mercenary." Hotch offered.

"You think he did this to get back at me? Out of professional jealousy?"

"Or personal." Hotch muttered.

"What?"

"Did you and Emily have a relationship?" Hotch asked, though he didn't want to.

"NO!" Eatser shouted, "No we never,... We were never together, some people thought we were, that's part of why our team was split up, they thought I brought forward Doyle's arrest to protect her."

"And did you?" Hotch asked, again not really wanting the answer.

Easter chewed his lip and was silent for a full minute, "Yes. I tried very hard to convince Emily that we had a chance at a relationship, we were close, but she never felt that way about me."

"So he's kept you around to show you either that he can take the one thing you never could, or that he can take away someone you value like you surpassed him in your careers.". Morgan told him.

"And we've both put her in Doyle's hands." Easter muttered.

"So how do we get her out of them?" Rossi asked.

There was silence for a moment before Hotch spoke up.

"We need to figure out why Doyle took her here and now before we can find where he's taken her. Do either Rawson or Doyle have any links in the area?" the question was directed at Garcia who immediately bobbed her head in acknowledgement before returning her attention to her computer screen.

There was a momentary pause in her activities before she replied glumly, "Nope, nada. Most of Doyle's associates and Rawson's for that matter are in the Boston area."

Easter nodded, "That makes sense, it's where we tracked him to and where Emily first made contact with him."

"Do you think he's taking her there? We're hours away and-" Garcia said, her brow furrowed in fresh concern for her friend.

"No," Reid interrupted her, "He has somewhere local, from what we know about Doyle he's very precise, he took her here because he has a location in mind."

"But how did he know we'd be here?" Garcia asked.

"He's good at research, he probably knows all about your team, he knows what sort of cases you will be called in for." Easter told them.

"Are you suggesting that he engineered this case to get Emily here?" Hotch asked him.

"He needs control, he could decide when and where he took her, bring her to his comfort zone if he were able to get the BAU called into the area." Morgan confirmed.

"So why here?" Hotch mused again, then turned back to Easter, "Is there anywhere local that has significance for you? If Rawson wants you to watch, he'll want it to be somewhere you know, he may have given Doyle a lead on a location."

"Actually there is, Emily and I came here during some time off, just driving through, we came across an old vineyard that was for sale, she joked that I should buy it for my retirement, and I did. But I've never done anything with it, it's empty."

"Is it remote?"

"Yes."

"Show us."


	13. Chapter 13  blood's thicker

_**Thanks again for all the lovely review :) so nice to know you're enjoying reading. Nearly done, enjoy, though that may be the wrong word for this particular chapter.**_

**Sense of danger, Chapter 13: Blood's thicker.**

**No infringement intended, no profit made.**

Emily struggled to find a comfortable position, feeling fresh blood ooze from her bound wrist. In the end she decided to lay back onto the bench to which she was tethered, hoping that the change in position or altitude would alter something in her thought processes and help her find a way out of this. She knew without a doubt that Ian Doyle did not want to go through with killing her. She also knew that Liam Doyle was basically OCD and once he started a task he would finish it no matter what, plus the amount of anger that he leveled at her eclipsed Ian's. She wondered what Liam had done during Ian's incarceration, other than cultivate his anger and find a way to break his brother out. What contact had he accumulated? What had he been doing? She had obviously underestimated his intelligence, the mere fact that he had evaded arrest for seven years without the partner whom she had considered to be essential to him was impressive.

Laying down she felt better, everything was less heavy but the pounding in her head intensified, she knew it was because laying down increased he blood flow to your head. That's why they tell you put your head down when you feel faint, why your body puts you on the floor when you do faint, it protects your brain. Her heart was still racing and she tried to ignore the adrenalin surge thinking about this situation illicited mainly because it intensified her nausea but also because it impaired her ability to think calmly.

Ian wouldn't go against Liam. Liam wouldn't entertain the possibility of letting her go alive. He had evaded arrest for this long, he had to have contacts, an income, he wasn't going to give that up. Ian had been in prison for the last seven year, his face was well know and presumably most of his contacts had also been tracked down and arrested. His offer to make a deal with Hotch told her that Ian Doyle had accepted that even if he got away from this clean there was very little available to him and he would rather not have the death of federal agent and all that that entailed tied to him. By cooperating he might have been able to assure himself prison time in the US. It was likely that he would have only been charged with kidnapping, which is far less significant than murdering a government agent. He was rational enough to see that. The problem was Liam wasn't. She settled back on her first point, Ian would not go against Liam. If he couldn't bring himself to kill her he still wouldn't stop Liam from doing it.

She wondered what was happening outside her dark cell. It smelled damp and was cold, she thought briefly about where she might be. Most likely a cellar, something underground and isolated. If she'd really been gone thirteen hours he could have taken her to another state, if she had been out cold like he said for a while she could have even been on a plane and not remembered. Somehow that didn't feel right though. Ian Doyle was nothing if not a good planner, he wouldn't have taken her from this location unless he had somewhere to take her to.

She heard someone approaching the door and stiffened, she knew it was not Ian Doyle's footfall. Was it one of his 'foot soldiers'? Or was it Liam?

The door swung open slowly to reveal the man standing there in silhouette. She must have been in the dark for longer than she thought, with nothing to stimulate her senses she knew it would have been usual to loose the ability to keep track of time. The light from behind him seared her eyes, then he flicked the overheard light on causing her to squint against it. She realized with a sinking feeling that it was Liam who had entered and sat herself back down on the floor to face him. Even though it was Ian whom she had faked a relationship with, and Ian who had suffered in a Korean prison Emily's raised heart rate told her it was this man she feared most. He had always been a bitter, brooding unknown quantity to her. Besides his relationship to and with Ian she had never been able to isolate his motives in their 'work', and she had eventually decided that he was actually a sadist and enjoyed seeing people come to harm and suffer thanks to his actions. Although Ian was ruthless he viewed their activities as a business and as such saw no reason to carry that behavior over into his personal life, he used it as an outlet. Liam lacked that skill, unable to draw the line he was as dangerous to cross personally as he was professionally. And now he had turned his attention to her.

She wasn't sure if he'd spoken. Emily had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts and anxieties that she really hadn't been paying attention to the looming figure in front of her. She raised her head to meet his eyes, she could feel his glare bore into her as she did so but did not turn away.

"Get up." he said simply.

She raised her tethered wrist by way of explanation, "I can't."

He shrugged and leaned down, a glint of silver in his hand. She watched disbelievingly as he unlocked he wrist from the cuffs. Unsure what to do she left her hand laying against the loosen restraints for a moment until he nodded to her that she should remove her hand.

"Now get up." he said again.

She resisted the urge to rub her cut and bruised wrist as she stood stiffly and slowly. That action would only aggravate the cuts on her hands anyway.

"Back against the wall." He gestured to her with the gun in his hand, "Don't try anything, I can pull this trigger faster than you can do most things, and I'd make sure it wasn't a clean kill shot _Lauren._" he sneered her assumed name at her as she backed slowly away from him until her back was pressed up against the cold damp wall.

"You might have messed up my brother's head _again _but mine's screwed on, and no matter what he thinks I'm not letting the spy who put my brother in jail walk out of here." He told her.

"Your brother's actions are what put him in jail, I simply brought them to light." she said calmly. No matter how hard her heart was pounding she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing he had made her afraid.

"That's how you beg for your life? For your child's?"

She licked her dry lips before answering, "I'm not going to beg, nothing I say will change your mind you will either do it or you won't." she said with a confidence she did not feel. She felt pretty certain 'do it' was the going to be the outcome here but maybe she could stall him, even a few minutes might mean her team was closer to finding her.

"I always saw through you, I told him you were to good to be true." he sneered at her.

She nodded, thats what he wanted, he wanted to prove he was right and that he had been more important that her to Ian Doyle, "That's right, you caused me many problems."

"If he would've let me check your background out I would have uncovered you straight away." Liam told her confidently.

She shrugged, "My background was good I thought it would stand up, but you've managed to stay off the grid all these years, you must have good contacts I don't know about,"

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you saw through me straight away, that I had to work hard to charm Ian into protecting me from you."

"And it seems you've done it again." he snorted.

_Ooops, wrong button Emily._ She told herself. "But he's not protecting me from you, he isn't here. He left you the key and went?"

Liam raised his eyebrows and smirked, "No, he's upstairs finding food, he doesn't know i'm here."

His icy smile sent a shiver down her spine, he intended to finish her and leave her for Ian to find and to dispose of. Maybe he would flee and leave Ian to clean up, he'd been off the grid this long why would he risk being associated with his escaped felon brother?

He took a step toward her and she reflexively pushed back into the hard surface, of course the door was open, she could try to run for it but she doubted she'd get past him or away fast enough, but she couldn't just wait for him to advance on her. She braced herself waiting for him to come closer.

Another step forward, he was watching her intently but she didn't care, she was going to try anyway. She grasped her hands together and launched herself toward him, catching him with her shoulder against his chest and her elbow in his abdomen. She heard the air leave his chest in a rush as she realized they were both toppling over with the force of her momentum. He clattered on to his back on the hard concrete floor, her following him down unable to stop her descent. Above her she heard the unmistakable sound of gun fire, _please God let that be them._

She was more prepared for the impact and so rolled off Liam's form and righted herself quicker than him. She made a dash for the door, but it was short lived as Liam grabbed her wrist and twisted it high up behind her. An involuntary yelp escaped her as she fell to her knees, her own forward momentum pulling against his grip. She heard a sickening crack and the pain in her arm intensified. She didn't have a lot of time to contemplate it though as Liam had wrapped his arm around her neck in a choke hold and dragged her to her feet, wrestling her away from the door as she tried to kick out. He spun her and pressed her against the wall with his hand wrapped around her throat.

"They're here." she choked out as he intensified the pressure.

She saw him reach behind him and wondered if he was reaching for the gun he'd had earlier, a flash of silver contradicted her, followed by a red hot pain in the left side of her abdomen. Her eyes went wide as he backed away, the bloodied knife in his hand. She fought for breath against the pain and realized she was on the floor looking up at her assailant. She heard footfall heavy and urgent down some stairs and shouting, Liam dropped the knife and went for the gun advancing on the door, he didn't get very far until a single shot brought him down to floor level with her, his eyes already blank and dead when his head rolled round to meet her stare.

Suddenly Hotch was in her line of vision, leaning over her. He was talking but she couldn't make it out, it was like she was under the surface of a lake looking and listening to what was happening above but not really understanding it. His hand was on her face, he was shouting her name, she could understand that. His hand was warm and slick, her blood she realized. He was alternately pressing on the stab wound and trying to get her to respond. She wasn't sure she knew how to speak anymore, she couldn't feel the pressure or pain from her wound and she knew that was bad. Very bad. She used every last bit of energy she had to reach her hand up and grasp his arm, "I'm sorry." she told him, not really knowing whether she had managed to get the words out or not. Her face was wet again, tears, his tears were falling onto her face she realized as she released her grip and embraced the blackness.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Think this may be the longest chapter yet, not the longest wait though :). Thanks so much for reading, there will be two chapter after this then that's it!**_

**Sense of danger chapter 14: crossing lines**

As he listened to the sounds around him Hotch understood why ICU patients often woke with psychosis and complaining they could get no rest. Even from the side-room he sat in he could hear the hum and whoosh of half a dozen ventilators, none of them in time with each other. The infusions pumps that delivered life preserving drugs constantly clicked you realised when you sat next to them, though quiet on their own the fact that there was probably a hundred of them in the unit made it a considerable background noise. Then there was the telephone which constantly rang, various alarms that took turns in sounding in various bedspaces, the nurses talking to one another and relatives murmuring. All in all he decided the middle of the freeway would probably have been a quieter place to sit. They'd tried to get him to leave first with rules about next of kin and marriage, then with platitudes about how she wouldn't be awake for a while. Hotch had stopped short of pulling his gun to make his point, just. He knew it would be a while before he let her out of his sight again.

On the approach to the vinyard they'd seen off road vehicles parked up, Doyle's preferred mode of travel Easter had informed them, and had gone in prepared. The located him in the kitchen and that was where he had fallen after rushing Easter with the knife he happened to have in his hand. Liam was taken down the same way and though Hotch hadn't been aware of it a further sweep showed they were the only ones on the property. Hotch looked down at his hands where Emily's blood seemed to still stain them though he had washed them thoroughly while she was in surgery. The arms of his while shirt were splattered with deep crimson where her blood had soaked up the sleeves while he waited for the medics, one bore the unmistakable outline of her fingers where she had held on to whisper her apology to him. She'd been unconscious since then. She had mercifully not had to witness the dash to the nearest hospital while paramedics worked furiously to get her blood pressure up. She'd missed the furore in the ER while various doctors and nurses discussed the best treatment options 'incase the baby survived'. And she was unaware of the hours the team sat in complete silence in the waiting room outside the OR.

Hotch sent the rest of the team away to rest after she was stabilised in the ICU and he stayed to wait for her mother's arrival. He wasn't sure Emily would thank him for calling her but she was technically her next of kin. He wasn't sure he would survive his encounter with ambassador given the condition he was presenting her daughter to her while she was under his care. He raised his eyes from his hands to look over at the sedated form on the bed beside him.

Emily was bruised and bloodied and seemingly secured to her bed by a complex series of tubes and wires. Wires on her chest recorded her heart rate and rhythm, a tube with a red tap at her wrist recorded her blood pressure, a blue tube in her neck gave her blood transfusions, pain medication, sedation and fluids, there was a tube down her throat supplying her connection to the ventilator, tubes in the left side of her chest draining away blood and air, and a tube down her nose to her stomach was hooked up to suction. He was afraid to touch her, he wasn't sure he could find a space to touch her skin to skin. He sighed as he watched her chest rise and fall in time with the ventilator and it's brightly illuminated screen, a glance a the nurse charged with her care told him she was satisfied with all that the screens outputted as she recoded their values in differing colours in differing positions on the vast chart on the table that served as a division between them.

He reached out his hand and slipped it underneath the line running from her wrist to the monitor so he could feel her skin. She was cool but not alarmingly so as he stroked gently up and down the inside of her arm. He felt tears prick his eyes and fought them, this wasn't the time or place, maybe when he got home and went to bed. Whenever that may be, he didn't feel like he wanted to leave here until Emily walked out with him.

His thoughts were interrupted by bustle in the door to the room they sat in, a woman he quickly recognised breezed in.

"Ambassador Prentiss." he said, not standing as he usually would. He had met the woman several times and honestly didn't much care for her but was surprised to see her here genuinely, truly rattled. He hadn't really expected her to come, he saw he had misjudged her.

"Please call me Elizabeth," she told him quickly as she sat in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, "I think your relationship with my daughter earns you that right."

The nurse looked ready to interject, Hotch knew there was only one bedside visitor allowed, she seemed to think better of it and retreated herself to a seat by the door where she could still see Emily and monitor her without being within earshot of their conversation.

"What happened?" she asked quietly.

Hotch cleared his throat before he answered carefully, "Someone from a case she worked before she came to the BAU targeted her, took her from the hotel we were staying at, he had her for around 14 hours, she was stabbed."

Elizabeth Prentiss nodded slowly, "Wasn't there someone from the team in an adjoining hotel room? I know you two aren't allowed to share a room when on a case."

Her choice of words made Hotch feel like a naughty teenager and what he was going to tell her didn't make him feel any better, "She wasn't feeling well and went back to the hotel to rest. Emily and I had...been apart for a couple of weeks. We..the team didn't know, she hadn't told us but she had found out she was pregnant."

"She didn't think you wanted it?" she asked sharply.

"I didn't know she was pregnant, but we had been trying for a baby, we think that she manufactured a break up because she knew this old case was going to be problematic." he was careful with his selection of words, he knew she noticed it, she was a politician after all, an expert at controlling her own behaviour.

He watched the ambassador chew his words over and place her own hand on her daughter's shoulder, "Always running off trying to do everything on your own. Just like last time."

Hotch tilted his head in question, "Last time?"

"I'm sure she told you? When she was a teenager...she was pregnant-"

"And she had an abortion, yes she did tell me, but she told me you didn't know." he tried to fight off the slack jawed expression that threatened.

"You think I wouldn't notice that my fifteen year old daughter missed her period and got sick with migraines for the first time in her life?"

"I ..uh-" Hotch was unable to form a coherent response.

"You really think I would let Emily and Matthew Benton arrange a back street abortion abroad? You really think at fifteen either of them would have managed that, even in desperation?"

"You helped Matthew arrange an abortion for Emily? Why didn't you tell her you knew? Support her?" he asked.

"I did, I arranged the appointment, paid, if she wanted my support she knew where to find me, I did the best I could at the time. I ensured she was safe, had a friend with her and secured her future the way she wanted it.". She seemed to run out of steam as starred at her daughter's face.

The background of the machines took over as silence fell again. Hotch reverted to gazing at his hand as it rested on Emily's arm.

"Why don't you go and get an hour's sleep? You look like hell." she told him from the opposite side of the bed.

He shook his head slowly, "I don't want her to be on her own when she wakes up."

Elizabeth gestured to the nursing staff, "They're just changing shift, it's seven thirty am, they will not be reducing her sedation until the new shift of medical staff arrive around nine."

He bit his lip, "That isn't really what I meant. There are some things we need to address,

I don't want to leave her alone until that's done."

"I don't think she'll be up to a domestic Aaron."

"I know that, she'll just need some reassurance and I need to give her that. You sound conversant in all things health care related." he commented, hoping his observation would throw the conversation away from himself.

Elizabeth nodded, "My mother was an ITU nurse, you pick something's up."

"What was her speciality?"

"She worked with babies with heart defects, then moved into hospice work before she retired."

Hotch nodded, knowing nothing about medicine he couldn't come up with anything to keep the conversation going so he allowed silence to fall again. He regretted sitting directly in line of sight of a clock as his eye was continually drawn to it now he had a timeline for the morning in mind. She was probably correct is saying that he looked awful, he'd been awake a long time, drunk too much bad coffee and eaten too little. He had spoken to Jack and told him he would be here a little longer than he thought because Emily had been hurt. Jack had been concerned but easily reassured. Hotch wished he could allay his own fears so easily.

Elizabeth cleared her throat and rose, "I'm going to go check into a hotel if you're staying here, you'll call when she wakes up?"

Hotch nodded, unsure whether it had been a question or statement but agreeing in any case. He watched the older woman walk from the unit, there was no doubting the two women's genetic connection. However they felt about each other they we're more alike than either of them would admit. Both fiercely independent yet protective of what was important to them in their own ways. Able to keep secrets, not always to their benefit it had to be said. How different would their relationship have been if Emily's mother had admitted she knew about the pregnancy and been the person holding her hand in that doctors office?

Hotch paced between chairs and the coffee machine over the next hew hours as he anxiously watched Emily's new nurse adjust the pumps and watch the monitors for signs that she was waking up. The medical staff briefly entered and explained recovery time to him, she was looking at about two weeks in hospital, that's if everything went smoothly and they could take the chest drains out soon, after that a lengthy and painful recovery, abdominal muscles and used for everything and could cause all sorts of problems, assuming that her other injuries healed well.

He was deeply absorbed in reading his coffee cup when she suddenly arched off the bed giving a massive gasp, he jumped as all the alarms went off at once, the ventilator, the monitor recording her vitals and some of the pumps delivering her meds. As he turned toward her startled her back fell back onto the bed as she coughed against the tube, her hands flying to her face to try to pull the offending object out. Instinctively he grabbed her hands to stop her.

"I'll get the anaesthetist to come take that out." the nurse told him as she bolted for the phone.

"Emily," he said, not quietly, he needed to grab her attention as she fought against his gentle restraint and all the lines that held her, "Emily, it's OK, it me Aaron, listen they're going to take that out but you just have to calm down and wait a minute, OK? Just open your eyes and look at me."

She ceased struggling almost immediately but continued coughing encouraging the incessant alarm of the ventilator, finally she pulled in a deep breath and the vent caught up with her and silenced it's self. Her heart rate was still sky high in panic or pain meaning the overheard beeping continued.

She opened her eyes slightly and screwed them shut again a few times before she could adjust to the light and focus on him.

"Hi." he said softly when he was sure she was finally more aware of where she was.

"Liam stabbed you," he told her, "you gave us a scare but you're going to be ok."

Tears filled her eyes as she cried silently, unable to make a sound with the tube in place, "ssshhh, it's ok. Ian and Liam were the only ones involved here, they're both dead."

She closed her eyes for a moment on hearing that, but opened them and nodded for him to continue.

"We know who gave them the information on your old team and they've been picked up. The team are at the hotel, and so is your mother."

Her eyes went wide at hearing this, there one sided interaction was cut off by the arrival of the man Hotch assumed to be the anaesthetist. He washed his hands, listened to Emily's lungs and asked the nurse about a couple of parameters before addressing Emily and telling her he felt he could safely remove the tube. He raised the bed to a sitting position which Hotch could see caused Emily considerable pain. He pulled the tape holding it in from her face leaving angry red marks and held the tube in place himself while the nurse prepared other equipment alongside him.

"I'm going to ask you to take a deep breath in and cough and I'll remove this tube as you cough. We'll put oxygen on you straight away and there'll be equipment out incase you need to have a tube out back down in the next few hours, do you understand?"

Emily gave a quick nod in response, the doctor nodded his agreement, "On three, one...two...three."

They moved so quick Hotch didn't really see what they did he just heard Emily coughing, starting with the forced cough she'd been asked for and progressing into a chest heaving choke as he pulled the tube up and out of her throat. She grasped her hand to her side as she tried to catch her breath with the mask over her face, her head lolling forward slightly. Hotch had to fight the instinct to help her sit straight. Once her breathing settled she sank back against the bed more and the doctor and nurse backed off from the bedside slightly.

Finally Emily turned her head toward Hotch to see him properly. He took the opportunity to take hold of her hand, she watched him grip it like it belonged to someone else.

"Thank you for being here." she whispered.

"I wouldn't be anywhere else Emily. I love you."

Even with her head bowed slightly Hotch could see tears spill from her eyes, "I love you too. I'm sorry."

He stroked his thumb across hers as she continued to fight tears, "We have a lot to talk about, but it's nothing we can't get through Emily, I'm not going anywhere ok."

She sobbed more deeply, which it was evident pained her more as she closed her eyes to try to block out the pain and regain some of her composure, "It's more than I deserve, you should hate me."

He shook his head and lowered his gaze to try to get eye contact with her, "Don't say that, everyone makes mistakes, I love you and you can't do anything to change that, you're stuck with me."

A smile broke through her tears as she looked back into his face.

He cleared his throat, "Emily... They did a scan after you came out of theatre,...Emily, the baby-"

She put a finger on his lips to stop him as tears flowed freely again, "Please, don't say it, I already know. I don't want to hear you say it."


	15. Chapter 15

Thank you to anyone still reading, there WILL be another chapter to finish this off.

Not mine, no profit made, no infringement of danger - chapter 15 - Unsurmountable

Emily watched Hotch's mouth open and close again as he adjusted his position, moving in closer, as if his proximity would soften the blow from the news he was going to deliver. She shook her head again and turned her face away, transfixed by the sight of the tubes protruding from her chest there. She took a few deep breaths as she tried to steady her breathing and banish anymore tears, they became ragged gasps as she realised quite how painful that was when she was breathing against taught stitches in her side and the stiff chest drains. She welcomed the pain, it was no less than she deserved. That was one of the reasons she hadn't fought back against Doyle when he confronted her in the hotel, not just for the sake of the baby. Emily had always known that what she had done back then would have consequences one day. She had only hoped those consequences would be confined to herself, in fact it had been much worse than she had feared. Her team had been forced to watch it play out, along with a man who loved her. Finally, a man who loved her and whom she loved and he now knew their child had died because of her actions before it even had a chance of a life of its own. Momentarily she felt fuzzy and disconnected, the change in pitch of one of the machines at her side told her that was probably the effects of a boost of some sort of pain medication. It had a warm numbing effect on her brain, made her feel as if she were slipping down a hole, she wanted to just keep going until she hit the bottom."Emily?" that voice, his voice. He sounded his usual gentle, compassionate self. It made her want to throw her hands over her head, she didn't deserve anything but anger from him.

Her eyes fixed on the chest drains again. Fascinating things, she watched as a droplet of blood, her blood, flicked back and forth in the tube in time with her breathing. Her eyes were heavy, she wasn't sure they were really open anymore, maybe she just thought they were. She turned her head back to face him, she better do it now, it would be easier to face him now with whatever drug that was running through her system. His features were fuzzy and badly defined even though he was basically sitting on top of her, she realised belatedly it was because her eyes were half closed but she couldn't do anything about that at the moment.

"Emily," he said again, seeking eye contact so he knew he had her attention and understanding, "listen, the baby's OK."She shook her head, "You're just saying that." she whispered, her eyes drifting closed.

He leant over and kissed her forehead, "No I'm not, you kept our baby safe Emily, you're always looking out for other people even when you're so bad at looking after yourself."

Emily shook her head again, unable to take in what he was saying, "I can't...I'm tired." she settled on finally.

Hotch brought his hand up to her face and cupped what he could of her cheek between the oxygen mask and the thin yellow tube that still protruded from her nose and was taped across her cheek bone, "Then get some rest." he whispered.

She looked up into his face with heavy eyelids, "I don't deserve this."

"No you deserve so much better, and it's going to be much better from here on in." he told her though he was sure she didn't hear a word, her eyes were already closed.

When Emily opened her eyes again she felt much clearer, though she could tell she still had a good amount of medication floating around in her blood stream. She listened to the noises around her for a few moments, allowing her eyes to stay unfocused as she concentrated on gaining some sense from one sense alone. When she turned her attention to what she could see she was surprised to find Hotch still sitting opposite her. She was no longer sure what she remembered and what was a drug induced image. He saw the recognition of her gaze and raised his eyebrows in a silent question, was she more lucid?"Hey." she said softly.

He smiled warmly, "Hey yourself."

"What you said before-" she asked in a rush.

"The baby's OK." he told her firmly.

They re sure? she asked, barely above a whisper, hardly daring to invest any optimism in his statement. She watched as Hotch leaned slightly to one side, fishing around in his pocket, once his fingers fixed upon what he sought he proffered it to her, a small glossy square of paper.

She slowly turned it over in her hand, realising now she attempted a purposeful movement just how slowed up she was. A greyscale picture came into focus infront of her, the type which could easily be dismissed an abstract image but she knew exactly what she was looking at, she already had an ultrasound image of their baby in her purse. On this picture the baby s shape was more defined and he, or she, lay lazily across the bottom of the frame as if soaking up sun in a hammock, her previous image had showed an illy defined smudge with a flickering heartbeat, a far cry from the profile which graced this small square work of art. The date was, she assumed, today s, the name attached to the image was hers.

They had to give you some drugs they would rather have held off on, but they re confident they won t affect the baby. The benefit of making sure you had a blood pressure supplying the baby with oxygen they felt outweighed the risk of giving them. he told her gently, The anaesthetic for the surgery was the biggest risk, and the scan was taken afterwards, everything looks fine. What about all these? she gestured to the wall of equipment behind her.

It s mostly fluids, some pain relief. The baby would be distressed if you were in pain so it s for both of you. They told me they re being careful with dosage, you re not getting as much as you would have been if you weren t pregnant.

She nodded slowly to show her comprehension, as she swallowed she could feel the tube which remained in the back of her throat making her grimace as she brought her hand up to her face to trace it lightly with her fingertips, When can I go home? Emily... she reprimanded her with the tone of his voice, only awake a few minutes and already planning her escape.

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrow in response, imploring him to give her some sort of indication. Well you have to be able to do some things by yourself, firstly breathe, so you got that covered, unlike earlier. Then you need all those tubes out, safely. Then you need to drink, and eat and walk a few steps. It s going to take a while Emily. And, you re not going home anyway. What?

Well, you are, but you're coming home with me. I m never letting you out of my sight again. he told her earnestly.

I m sorry. she whispered, You shouldn t want anything to do with me.

Hotch sighed as he sidled in as close to her as he could and sought her eyes, they shone back at him with threatened tears, I love you, Emily, and I m not saying that we don t have ... issues we need to work out, but I am saying that they are not as important as being with you.

She pursed her lips and looked away before she asked, Are you just saying that because of the baby?

Hotch shook his head abruptly, taking hold of both her hands, No, Emily, absolutely not. My only concern has been finding you and making sure you re safe. Having a baby is going to be life changing, and amazing, and tiring but I wouldn t want any of that if it wasn t going to be with you. She nodded, unable to reply. She had never had any difficulty in reading him and she knew his words were genuine, she also felt she knew she didn t deserve them. Everything this man had been through and he was sitting by her side, planning their future when she had risked it all.

There is one thing that may be utterly unsurmountable. he told stared back without comprehension until he continued, I think your mother now officially hates me. Finally she smiled at him despite the tube still taped across her face, I have never wanted you more in that case.


	16. Chapter 16

_Thanks so much for sticking with the story and the lovely reviews for the last chapter, apologies for the bizarre formatting problems on chapter 15. This is it, THE END, I hope I can do them justice._

Sense of danger - chapter 16

She had often experienced that blissful moment of disorientation on waking. That moment when your mind is empty, occupied only by the slow regain of your senses bringing themselves to a waking state. It is peaceful, comfortable and quiet before whichever reality awaits grabs your guts and you feel yourself dragged down by realization. Indeed Emily Prentiss had experienced that moment perhaps a hundred times, perhaps a thousand, but she had never experience the reverse, until recently. She now knew realization could bring you up as well as down, that the pull could make your heart soar as well as your stomach sink. As her senses poured information to her in the dim light a slow smile spread across her face. The room was dimly lit but she had no difficulty making out the detail surrounding her.

A few inches from where she lay a polished pine crib stood. It was furnished simply, the daisies carved into its surface a contradiction to the plain cream cotton bedding which surrounded the warm sleeping bundle it contained. In the half light she watched her daughter's extended hand as her fingers flickered briefly, repeating a miniature version of the rhythmic grasping motion she exercised when she was feeding. As if to confirm what was fleeting through her dreams she sucked at the air for a moment though she remained fast asleep. Beyond the perfect fingers her mop of dark hair crowned her ivory white features, glossy yet disarrayed having not yet decided where it should naturally sit. In profile Emily could see perfect rose bud lips pressed together as if in a slow dreamtime kiss. She had to remind herself that this particular miracle was here, and was hers, theirs. Behind her Emily knew Hotch was not asleep. He sat watching over them both, a sleepy contented smile on his face. She didn't need to speak to him for him to know she was awake, just as she didn't need to turn around to see him to know he was keeping gentle watch on them both. She felt his protection draped over them, comforting and calming her fears, both rational and otherwise.

"You are suppose to sleep when she does." he intoned quietly, but with no hint of scolding in his voice.

His voice drew a contented sleepy sigh from the form before them, but she did not wake.

Emily smiled wider at their daughter's reaction to her father's voice. From the moment she was born she had regarded her father with wonder, gazing at him in the delivery with an intensity even the midwife had commented on. It was as if she was trying to memorize his features from every angle. Her reaction to Emily had been very different and much more visceral. She always sought contact with her mother's skin, often with her eyes closed, using her other senses to catalogue her mother's features. She would pat and stroke and breathe deeply of her mother's scent as she contoured to her form in a way which astonished Emily. She had no idea that having nestled inside her body for 9 months she would find this child such an amazingly perfect fit on the outside. She moulded herself to Emily as if they were two pieces of a jigsaw that were meant to fit together, it was something she was unable to describe because it was such a base sensory experience and not an intellectual one.

"You first." she answered quietly, as she reluctantly twisted away from the crib to meet his sleepy gaze.

Hotch raised his eyebrows with a gentle smile, "I like to watch over both the ladies in my life." he told her.

"A trait that Jack certainly shares."

Hotch nodded, "I'm surprised we managed to get him to sleep in his own bed and not curled up on the bottom of ours."

"Or in the crib with her." Emily offered.

"We certainly did make a beautiful little person."

Emily pulled herself up so she matched his posture more and leaned herself into his side as he looped his arm around her, "Yes we did." she agreed easily, "It's good to be home, together."

"I think we've seen enough of hospitals." he echoed her sentiment, "Jack missed you last night. I think he was confused about how long you would be staying."

"My last visit wasn't exactly short to be fair."

"And he wasn't eagerly awaiting his baby sister then so one night probably seemed like an eternity to him."

"I was pretty eager to get home myself," she admitted, "I didn't feel like she was really ours until we got her through the door."

He leaned his head against her as they both gazed over to the crib, Emily felt her body relax against him as she let out a contented sigh.

"Do you want a drink or anything?" he asked her.

"No thanks, I'm fine. I just want to lie here with you, and Gracie, and Jack." she added with a giggle as the bedroom door creaked open and he padded across the floor to climb into bed with them wearing a cheeky smile.

"Buddy, it's nighttime." Hotch told him, though his voice held no scolding for the late night visit.

"You were talking, you woke me up and I missed Gracie." Jack said with a slight pout.

As if on cue the subject of her brother's appeal squeaked as she stretched, her chubby arms drawn up behind her head as she wiggled into a yawn. Apparently not one to wake in a hail of cries Gracie blinked her eyes open and lay examining her surroundings. Catching sight of her own hand she briefly extended her fingers then brought its partner up to meet it before bringing them both to her lips. Unaware of her rapt audience she continued to smack her lips against her fist until her mother's smiling face entered her view.

Nestled safely in bed together Emily adjusted her pillows before latching the baby on to feed as she glanced across to see Jack shuffling into a comfortable position in the crook of his father's arm. Emily stroked her daughter's jet black hair as she watched her close her eyes in contentment, Gracie's cheek was warm and soft against the palm of her hand and she smelled clean and sweet. Emily sought out Hotch's free hand with hers and he entangled their fingers together before bringing them up to his lips and planting a gentle kiss on her knuckles.

"Welcome to the family Gracie."


End file.
